[PEN-L:9990] Feudal economic relations

[PHILLPS]

I have some difficulty with Wojteck's  association of feudal
labour relations with labour abundance. I have always
associated feudal (and other forms of 'unfree' labour) with
labour shortage.  to be blunt, the ruling class imposes
'unfree' labour bondage because 'free' labour is too
expensive.  for references see Evsey Domar, "The Causes of
Slavery or Serfdom: a Hypothesis," *J of Ec History*, march 1970:
or my article on the subject, "Land Tenure and Economic Development:
a comparison of Upper and Lower Canada",  *J of Canadian Studies*,
May 1974.

Nasvidinje,
Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University College
University of Manitoba

[PEN-L:9989] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Anthony P D'Costa]

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, 8 May 1997, Louis N Proyect wrote:

> On Thu, 8 May 1997, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I presume similar arguments were tossed around when Frederick Winslow Taylor
> > started replacing skilled workers with "hacks" controlled through his
> > time-motion studies.  The quality might have gone down then and may, as
> > well, go down now (for that matter, Windows 95 is a piece of shit comparing
> > to Windows 3.1) -- but since when capitalists started to care about making
> > quality products?
> > 
> 
> Louis: One of the things that is so interesting about the software
> industry is that it has resisted the deskilling process that Stanley
> Aronowitz and William DeFazio wrote about in "The Jobless Future". I have
> seen efforts to mechanize and Taylorize the programming business since the
> mid 1970s, but it has come to naught. The latest magic bullet is something
> called "object orientation" (OO). It has been a fiasco. OO tries to create
> the equivalent of replacable modules, such as the kind that are found in
> hardware assemblies. Companies have tried and abandoned OO because they
> discover that software algorithms and data are constantly changing to
> reflect new company policies. Furthermore, in a large business enterprise,
> there are enormously complex interactions that defy the effort to
> "modularize" them.  I have been working for the past year on a project
> that started in 1992 to automate the facilities management department at
> Columbia using OO. I think most people realize at this point that OO
> hindered things. Everybody assumed that the facilities management system
> would be part of a university-wide client server OO architecture.
> Meanwhile, in the last year or so Web based Intranet applications seem to
> have much more promise and the architecture of 5 years ago seems sort of
> outmoded. 
> 
> 
> > Deskilling is not about product quality but about control of labour.
> > "Imported" programmers may lack the skills of their domestic counterparts --
> > but they have two highly desirable (from the management's view point)
> > qualities: they are cheap, and they are alienated from the local labour
> > force -- which makes it unlikely that they will organize.  
> > 
> 
> Louis: I don't expect Indian programmers or their American counterparts to
> ever organize. This is basically a petty-bourgeois layer. 

One can understand the US political culture toward labor.  But the Indian
story is not fully captured by its petty bourg dimension.  In India
mobility social and economic is extremely important.  These people who
become computer professionals have gone through a very tough system.  Most
Americans will not survive.  Their background is middle class, valueing
education as the principal medium for mobility, but one that for
many borders on lower class incomes.  Having gone through a system
(admissions tests for schools, entrance exams for colleges, and landing a
job) successfully it would be foolish to simply throw all that way.
Besides, how will they organize in the US?  Most of them are on temporary
visas or at best permanent residents.  Their resident status itself is
problematic.  But more importantly, organized labor in India has had a bad
rap as well.  This is Fabianism in action.  The Bank Unions in India
considered to be the most powerful and literally brings the counry to its
knees (they are all low level white collar workers) have successfully kept
compterization at bay.  They are good sources of employment but service
and efficiency are out the day.  The Indians are tired of such
organization because their day to day life is made miserable.  Given such
a context I am not surprised that these petty bourg professionals will not
organize.  On the other hand, it would be a mistake to predict that such
organization will not take place in India.

 This is another
> flaw in Aronowitz and DeFazio's analysis. He believes that there is some
> kind of proletarianization going on. This is ridiculous. The highest per
> capita membership in the Liberatarian Party of any corporation in the US
> is at Microsoft. 
> 

[PEN-L:9988] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Anthony P D'Costa]

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, 8 May 1997, Louis Proyect wrote:

> Sid Schniad:
> 
snip

> >It's not just low end jobs that we're talking about, either.  The Indian 
> >software industry is state-of-the-art in sophistication, but it pays wages
> that 
> >are a fraction of those paid software writers in Europe and North America.  
> >This is what makes Robert Reich's promotion of education, training and 
> >skills such a meaningless response to capital's restructuring of work;
> capital 
> >doesn't have to choose between high skills and high wages on the one hand 
> >and low skills and low wages on the other.  It can have *both*.
> >

True, and skills relate to higher productivity.  This is clearly case of
many heavy industries in which the US is longer competitive.  Harley
Shaiken's work on the Mexican auto indstry is a good case: high
productivity with low wages.  However, it would be naive to think that
Mexicans ought to get US wages.  It is the Mexican economy that determines
the wage rates.  But we cannot omit the fact that Mexican wages that are
tied to the high skill-productivity sectors also experience rising wages
relative to other Mexican sectors.

> 
> The notion that programming jobs are being exported to India is something
> that people in my field discuss often. Not only is this a constant worry,
> there is also the worry that computer programmers from India will be
> imported into the United States. 

This has been going on for several years.  Also known as "body shopping."
I know scores of my college friends who are in this line of work in India
and US and Europe.  The racist implications notwithstanding it simply
shows that technology can be learnt and therefore the periphery is not
what it is as depited by the Wallersteinian story.
earlier point against the implication that the periphery will be frozen in
their place 

Two years ago, the AIG, a NYC based
> multinational financial corporation, fired all of its computer programmers
> and replaced them with Indian consultants. This was reported widely in the
> trade press and even became an item on the network news as a sign of white
> collar decline.
> 
> Leaving aside the racist implications of a lot of the reporting on the
> Indian connection, there are a couple of comments I can make as an industry
> insider. First of all, AIG simply couldn't make things happen with the new
> staff. They lacked the breadth of experience the long-in-the-tooth in-house
> staff had acquired over decades. (My experience, by the way, is that
> American corporations have shot themselves in the foot with a lot of the
> downsizing that goes on in EDP. They view systems building as a simple
> technical task that can be done by hackers. Hackers, by and large, don't
> understand systems analysis. Furthermore, systems analysis can not be
> taught in a book. It is a skill that is tied to living experience.)

This is part of the learning process with experience being one important
element, especially when it comes to firm-specific tasks.  On the other
hand you still have to explain the ability of Indian engineers to be
working all over the world, in firms big and small, some as venture
capitalists.  The Indians in India do not have the "hackers" experience.
It's a rich country problem generally.  They are, however, good systems
analysts.

> 
> Right now there is a significant shortage of experienced computer
> professionals to fill existing jobs. Surprisingly, many of these jobs are
> in mainframe Cobol slots which supposedly were disappearing. Columbia
> University has a great deal of difficulty attracting Cobol programmers, who
> only 3 years ago were encouraged to think of themselves as unemployable
> dinosaurs. Many of the jobs, by the way, are tied to implementing Year 2000
> conversions. This problem stems from the inability of American corporations
> to plan ahead. Any fool knew 20 years ago that new systems should
> accomodate a change in the century. Did this prevent new systems from being
> built with yymmdd? Of course not.
> 
> Louis Proyect
> 
> 
> 
Anthony D'Costa

[PEN-L:9987] RE: Globalization

[Doug Henwood]

Laurie Dougherty wrote:

>I'm not trying to be mean here.  But this thread is really pushing my buttons
>and I'm tired of feeling told to shut up because I don't have all my
>coefficients in perfect order.

No one told you to shut up because of disordered coefficients. In fact, no
one has told you to shut up at all. Though I will say that this working
class authenticity act is wearing a bit thin.

Most of the people on this list are politicized intellectuals of one sort
or another. We're supposed to look at the world in some sort of historical
and theoretical context. Believe it or not, I think it matters a lot just
how new "globalization" is, and what it consists of exactly. I'd be happy
to hang out at your recommended bar and talk with people. In fact, I do
quite a bit of that already, and not just at bars, but at union halls,
church basements, and on the radio. I even have some working class
subscribers who write me and call me. They're not anything like your
description of the "real" working class quoted below.

And just what are we to conclude from this?

>You want to do a culture gig, Doug?  Forget trashing Stanley every chance you
>get.  Where is the challenge?  Go on down to the Red Fox Bar at the bowling
>alley on the corner of Poplar Level Road and Old Shep across from Appliance
>Park. You can talk Wall Street with Charles who keeps up with that stuff, or
>politics with Mike who is very smart, funny, a great big teddy bear of a guy
>who collects assault weapons as a hobby, reads paramilitary literature and
>used
>to be a small town cop.  Discuss the perils of postmodernism with my friend
>Becky (almost the only one besides me who did not buy the company\union
>Support the Gulf War T-shirt.)  Buy her a drink.  She collects glasses in the
>shape of a naked guy - a specialty of the house at the Red Fox.  For yourself,
>you could get a naked lady.  Carol - who believes that men are like tires,
>every
>woman should have a spare - will flirt with you until you start running by her
>that globalization ain't nothing new.  She gets fairly rabid on the
>subjects of
>immigration and folks who don't buy American (US American, that is).

Really, I mean what's your point? In sequence, it looks like this:
political theory is irrelevant, and the U.S. working class is armed,
sexually voracious, vulgar, and xenophobic. Might as well give up politics
then and trade options, eh?

Doug

[PEN-L:9986] Re: Europe

[William S. Lear]

On Thu, May 8, 1997 at 14:06:08 (-0700) Max B. Sawicky writes:
>>Europe, of course, is also a convenient way of getting these countries
>> off the hook and allowing them to move democracy one step further away from
>> the people, in hopes of getting a government more like ours, in which the
>> people don't have to be consulted with much frequency.
>
>It works the other way too.  National decisions are made
>or not made in reference to the requirements or constraints
>imposed by globalization, whereas a larger federation would
>have expanded scope for decision-making by virtue of its
>size and internal coordination.
>
>An example is the EU social charter, which Tony Blair,
>target of incessant thunder-bolts on left-wing internet
>lists, is going to sign onto.
>
>Localism doesn't grant democracy.  We had localism
>in the U.S., known as "states' rights".  "Close to the
>people" is B.S.  Democracy or its lack depends on
>the content of the law, which itself depends on other
>things, not on the mere size of a jurisdiction.

I see the EU as doing what was claimed---getting democracy away from
the hordes and into the hands of the Responsible Men, just as what
happened in the U.S. when the Articles of Confederation were felt too
weak to provide protection from democracy ("domestic rebellion", etc.)
and were dumped in favor of the Constitution.  During the reign of the
A of C there was a degree of local control (due, as Max notes, to the
structure of law) which was lost when that structure was
"strengthened" to protect "the opulent few" (Madison) from the "great
beast" (Hamilton).  The fake "localism" Max refers to is quite
different than that which existed during the (all too brief) time of
Daniel Shay and his ilk.  This division and continuity of interests
remains to this day, and capital has had enough of the temerarious
policies which placed workers and their families on par with mere
human beings.


Bill

[PEN-L:9985] Re: Indian Software Industry

[jesuspc]

I have almost ten years of experience developing computer programs for
large national and foreign companies here in Mexico; we use computers,
database development systems, and languages that are the same those
used by any programmer and system analyst in any country, so I think
that part of the reason that makes that companies like Hewlett Packard
to shut down facilities in the States, and create new ones in 
countries like India, is to cut costs by taking advantage of the  
acceptable skills of those programmers -many of them trained in 
England and the United States.
-
This is based on the nature and logic of the Capital, and one of the 
causes of its contradictions. After all, the Capital has not 
nationality. (As one top executive of Nestle say in an interview for 
Fortune Magazine in response to "where are you from?:" and he say 
"I'm from Nestle").
-

It is clear for me that the level and quality of education, and
experience of the informatics people determines  the quality of the
product, the ability to participate in complex projects, for 
teamwork, and to understand his "users" needs. This is also valid for 
the "user", I mean, if they work for any kind of organization, in 
accounting deps., in the production line or in the warehouse, and 
they just don't have enough knowledge -adapted to their speciality- 
on the capabilities -and limitations- of computers, 
telecommunications, robotics, obviously the results will be low 
quality and costly information systems. Is in this point that I 
believe that there is a considerable gap between developed and third 
world countries like Mexico. For example, here at the Autonomous 
University of Zacatecas, of the 15,000 alumni and faculty, just 7% 
(official data) have received some sort of computer education.

Jesus Perez Castañeda
Managing Editor
Political Economy Magazine
Zacatecas, Mexico
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:9984] RE: shadows on the cave wall

[Laurie Dougherty]

Some of us do have direct knowledge of some of what is going on. Why should we


dance with shadows? I know what I've seen.  I know it's not the whole of
reality, but I have made strenuous efforts to learn and understand more about
what is out there.

Every time I post something to pen-l about the GE experience, I get favorable
off-line comments from many directions: from Marxists and pomoistas, and people
I don't know well enough to characterize.  I don't know what the information
looks like when you all filter it through your various ideological and
theoretical lenses.  I know I have learned a lot from reading pen-l
(sometimes).  I've learned from a variety of schools of thought.  None have a
total grasp of reality and all are prone to moments of irrelevance and
silliness.

I want to document what I saw and went through because it was an incredible
vantage point on a turning point in history.  I didn't do much except get in a
few people's faces once in a while.  But I watched and listened closely and
carefully.  

But I don't live there any more. I want to draw out the lessons of that moment
and try to understand what is emerging from it.  But I live on the cusp of the
21st century.  I'm in communication with people around the world.  I'm not
above saying golly gee whiz once in a while.  I'm moving toward an agenda that
has nothing to do with putting the American Dream back together again.

If the capitalists want flexibility, why not?  It makes more sense to produce
on demand than to force consumption in order to be able to produce. If they
want flexibility, I want portability of benefits, flexibility to adjust work 
to other parts of life - having kids, lifelong learning. If they can get a
robot to do some of the idiot work I've done - let the robot do it. Why 
shouldn't we be talking about the kind of thing Louis mentioned.  It's never 
going to happen that we have a revolution and then get our pick of 
institutions. We need to process change now and learn how to make it work for 
people. We need to be talking about distribution as well as production.

(Jim, I'm responding to your comment, not your attitude. You've always seemed
willing to think things over even when they're not a perfect fit with your
own ideas.) 

-Laurie


Jim said:

>Sure, we're in a cave, unable to perceive exactly what's going on. But we
have no direct knowledge of many if not most of the phenomena we try to
understand (including the organization of production). We need all the help
from studies of the shadows we can get. And if our theory (or what's really
going on) predicts different shadows than actually occur?


in pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:9983] Re: Europe

[Max B. Sawicky]

> Reply-to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From:  Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject:   [PEN-L:9975] Europe

> My favorite right-wing columnist, Christopher Caldwell of the New York
> Press, wrote this . . .
 
> "This is the point, although Americans are reluctant to recognize it, of
> setting up the European Community: its member countries want to band
> together so they don't get divided and conquiered by the monster economy of
> the free world [the U.S.].

If 'conquered' means losing jobs due to lower labor
standards in the U.S., then the EU isn't such a bad
idea.

>Europe, of course, is also a convenient way of getting these countries
> off the hook and allowing them to move democracy one step further away from
> the people, in hopes of getting a government more like ours, in which the
> people don't have to be consulted with much frequency.

It works the other way too.  National decisions are made
or not made in reference to the requirements or constraints
imposed by globalization, whereas a larger federation would
have expanded scope for decision-making by virtue of its
size and internal coordination.

An example is the EU social charter, which Tony Blair,
target of incessant thunder-bolts on left-wing internet
lists, is going to sign onto.

Localism doesn't grant democracy.  We had localism
in the U.S., known as "states' rights".  "Close to the
people" is B.S.  Democracy or its lack depends on
the content of the law, which itself depends on other
things, not on the mere size of a jurisdiction.

As I mentioned here before, it is a commonplace that the
North did not wage the U.S. Civil War over slavery per se;
at the same time, it would hard to imagine a more
favorable course of history if the union came to be
divided.

>Take the French elections, which President Jacques Chirac called in
> order ot ratify France's position in Europe [N]o non-retired voter is
> so stupid as to vote to reform the welfare state, that is, to volunteer to
> do without benefits that everyone older than him has got and that he's
> already paid for. So what Chirac hopes to do is use the European monetary
> union to *force* his country into automatic deficit reductions by saying 'I
> didn't want to do it, but there was nothing I could do; we had to hit our
> targets.'"

The EU can be the vehicle for bad policies, it is quite true.
So far the policies implied by unification are more bad than good
(e.g., forcing rapid reduction of public debt and deficits), but that
is not preordained in the future.

MBS


===
Max B. SawickyEconomic Policy Institute
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  1660 L Street, NW
202-775-8810 (voice)  Ste. 1200
202-775-0819 (fax)Washington, DC  20036

Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views
of anyone associated with the Economic Policy
Institute.
===

[PEN-L:9982] Re: Books for Review

[BAIMAN]

Eric,

How are things going? - my usual lame greeting however blitzed 
out by 500 e-mails not too bad.

I would be interested in reviewing:

Comar, Edward A., ed. THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF COMMUNICATION: .

Thanks,


Ron

**

Ron Baiman
Dept. of Economics
Roosevelt UniversityFax: 312-341-3680
430 S. Michigan Ave
Chicago, Illinois 60605 Voice:  312-341-3694

**

UPDATE: Censorship at the University of Illinois

[Dennis Grammenos]

"Inside Illinois" is supposed to be an "employee publication"
of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  It is published
on the first and third Thursday of each month by the News Bureau of
the campus Office of Public Affairs.  This office is administered
by the associate chancellor for Public Affairs William "Bill" M.
Murphy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, the spin-meister for the
administration.

Many members of the GEO (Graduate Employees' Organization) were
surprised that "Inside Illinois" did not carry a story covering the
GEO's landslide victory in the recent elections (April 15-16).
Instead, the newspaper ran an article on the decision of the
administrative law judge that was adjudicating a legal case involving
the GEO and the administration, over the eligibility of graduate
employees to unionize. [This particular decision favored the
administration, but the GEO is appealing and GEO members are
confident that the decision will be resoundingly overturned in
appeal].

Anyhow...

After some inquiries by a GEO member it was revealed (by the editor
of the newspaper, Doris K. Dahl) that the staff had included
references to the GEO election results in the article about the
legal decision, but that associate chancellor Bill Murphy blocked
the publication of the references to the election!!!


I contacted Dean Bill Murphy and I expressed my displeasure at
the reported case of censorship.  As Murphy explained he had the staff
remove any reference to the elections because he "questioned the
relevance of the results to a story on the judge's decision."  And he
added "I still do [question the relevance].  I don't see the connection."

So, Dean Murphy directed the staff to kill any mention of the GEO election
results just because HE did not see the "connection"!  As a result, the
only story that mentions the GEO (on the front page at that) does not
mention that over 2,500 graduate employees on campus took the opportunity
to cast a ballot on an important matter that affects their lives!
The GEO election was big news on campus.  One would expect that "Inside
Illinois" would report on something as big as the GEO elections since it
directly affects over 5,000 staff at the university!  Yet, the ONE
mention of the GEO elections gets burried by fiat!

Furthermore, the reason why "Inside Illinois" didn't publish any
story at all on the GEO election victory, according to Bill Murphy,
was because the university community was already aware of the results
and because
"if 'Inside Illinois' were to mention the results,
it needed to do a complete story on the vote,
turnout, election sponsors, etc.--the minimum
information necessary to try to understand the
results--and I was afraid that that could be
characterized as 'spinning' the story."

Dean Murphy's arguments strike me as being disingenuous.  Surely the
university community had become just as aware of the legal decision
through the exact same channels that they became aware of the GEO
election results!:-)  And very little kept Murphy from "spinning" the legal
decision story, anyway.  Yet, he censored the publication of a story on
the GEO election lest he be accussed as "spinning" THAT story!

The bottom line is that Dean Murphy exercised his power as the
administrator of the News Bureau to kill a story on the GEO elections
and to remove any reference to the GEO elections from the article on the
legal decision.

Both actions count as CENSORSHIP!

It is yet another indication of the lengths to which the administration
of the University of Illinois will go to prevent its 5,000 graduate
employees from unionizing.


Still, the graduate employees WILL prevail and the GEO will emerge
victorious no matter what obstacles the administration erects.

WE SHALL WIN!

===
You, too, can register your displeasure with Dean Murphy by Emailing him at

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

You can CC your message to "Inside Illinois" at

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

===


In Solidarity,

Dennis Grammenos
Graduate Employee



 _
| Dennis Grammenos  [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
| Departments of Geography &  |
| Russian and East European Studies   |
| University of IllinoisPhone: (217) 333-1880 |
| Urbana, IL 61801  Fax:   (217) 244-1785 |
|_|

[PEN-L:9981] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Louis Proyect]

>I suggest those interested in this should take a look at what the Free
>Software Foundation has done.  Coincidentally, our shop (Dejanews) is
>almost 100% run on "free" software (Linux operating system, FSF/GNU
>tools, etc.).  The amount of sharing of ideas across firms is probably
>quite low, but free software does allow some of this to occur.  That's
>also one thing notable about Usenet newsgroups---they allow a great
>deal of software development to be done by a widely-dispersed set of
>people who, more or less, get an equal say in how things are done.
>
>
>Bill
>
>

Richard Stahlmann, who started the Free Software Foundation, was a student
at MIT during the antiwar movement and identified with it. His involvement
over the years in making products like EMACS, etc. available is tied to
this initial experience. For more info on this, take a look at Steven
Levy's "Hackers". Speaking of EMACS, I apologize for the last accidental
post. I hit a key combination I usually use in EMACS and accidentally
replied in Eudora. God, I need to get away from these fucking computers and
get a job as a landscape gardener or something.

Louis Proyect

[PEN-L:9980] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Louis Proyect]

Bill Lear:

>
>I suggest those interested in this should take a look at what the Free
>Software Foundation has done.  Coincidentally, our shop (Dejanews) is
>almost 100% run on "free" software (Linux operating system, FSF/GNU
>tools, etc.).  The amount of sharing of ideas across firms is probably
>quite low, but free software does allow some of this to occur.  That's
>also one thing notable about Usenet newsgroups---they allow a great
>deal of software development to be done by a widely-dispersed set of
>people who, more or less, get an equal say in how things are done.
>

The guy who started the Free Software Foundation--Bill Stahlmann

[PEN-L:9979] RE: Globalization

[Laurie Dougherty]

Responding to Doug's response to me from a couple of days ago, copied below:


ÐChintzy is an interesting way to put , Doug, useful though.  Looking at 
the US in the post war period, it was kind of chintzy. © Levittown, malls and
suburban sprawl.  A June and Ward, and Wally and the Beave veneer on the 
military industrial complex.  A real delusional moment in time. 

You make a very clear and concise case for the upside, so I'm somewhat
overstating the downside here, but we shouldn't forget it.  The fear of
communism also generated intense repression and diminution of intellectual
discourse.  Much of the rebellion you talk about was crushed, and what
successes there were were fragmented and often coopted.

A welfare state that supports people through transitions or smoothes 
inequalities among people or even over a person's or a household's life 
span is one thing, but one that maintains second class status and 
impoverishment for milliions is something else.  The US had some of the 
former and a lot of the latter.

What power unions had was more a matter of being in the right place at the
right time, a marriage of convenience between them and some very
powerful companies able to command mass markets, little competition, and 
economies of scale.  I don't know if much real strength or class consciousness 
was involved. There were black workers who were moving on a class agenda, not 
really much elsewhere.  I don't really know what happened to them.  I think 
some of the auto plants where there were active black workers' organizations 
shut down.

In 1969, the first year I lived in Louisville, GE was on strike for months.  
That was the last national strike against GE.  I remember going to the picket 
lines before dawn handing out left propaganda and showing support. They didn't 
exactly pay a lot of attention to us.  In 1975, that local poured money into 
the anti©busing movement and mobilized against the United Fund because some 
donations went to Legal Aid.

When I worked at GE, the '69 strike was something that might get mentioned 
once in a while, but it didn't seem like a great mythic event or anything. 
But years later, after some of us finally got really angry about getting 
laid off all the time and raised some hell about it, one of the Chief 
Stewards got up at a union meeting and spoke very passionately about what 
it was like when he first went to work there in the 60s.  He said they got 
laid off too. It was just part of paying dues. Mostly he talked about the 
strike, how rough it was, how he had to go on the road to find work. Told some
hobo tales.  I realized then that that strike had forged a bond; it was a 
victory that laid the foundation for their solid middle class lives.  It was 
their union, not ours.  

The seniority system shielded them from everything that came after that.  The
oil shocks of the 70s.  The '82 deep recession.  Sourcing, automation.  Those
of us who hired in in the 70s took the whole brunt of this.  And nobody new got
hired there in production in the 80s - not one person.  Same with auto, same
with a big telecom firm I did interviews at since going to grad school.  
Whenever the company cut back on overtime, or started giving out long 
vacations or short weeks, the high seniority folks would get restless. Once 
the union publicly called for a layoff to protect the 40 hour week for those 
who would still be there.  Another time I heard there was a petition passed to 
get the union to back a layoff.  

A steward once told me (he was talking about a guy who had the same low 
seniority I did, who wanted the union to file a grievance.)  The steward was 
bitching about it to me and he said©:"You know, you people are lucky to have a 
job."  My first reaction was, "Yeah, you're right."  It was such a rush of 
relief to get called back, always this love\hate thing with GE.  But by the 
end of the shift I was in a rage.  I went off on him.  I told him, "You know, 
you're the lucky one .© You've had  steady job your whole life to pay off your 
house, put your kids through school, take your trips to Las Vegas every year." 
And what he had to say to that was, "You're real cute when you get fired up.  
I'll take you to Vegas with me next time I go."   Never did make it though.

You want to do a culture gig, Doug?  Forget trashing Stanley every chance you 
get.  Where is the challenge?  Go on down to the Red Fox Bar at the bowling 
alley on the corner of Poplar Level Road and Old Shep across from Appliance 
Park. You can talk Wall Street with Charles who keeps up with that stuff, or
politics with Mike who is very smart, funny, a great big teddy bear of a guy
who collects assault weapons as a hobby, reads paramilitary literature and used
to be a small town cop.  Discuss the perils of postmodernism with my friend
Becky (almost the only one besides me who did not buy the company\union 
Support the Gulf War T-shirt.)  Buy her a drink.  She collects glasses in the
shape of a naked guy 

[PEN-L:9978] Re: Indian Software Industry

[William S. Lear]

On Thu, May 8, 1997 at 11:46:34 (-0700) Doug Henwood writes:
>William S. Lear wrote:
>
>>He's overthinking.  I've worked as a professional "software engineer"
>>for over a dozen years, and am currently working on "cutting edge"
>>stuff (OO and Internet).
>
>I think he was talking about the uses of computers in the workplace, not
>the creation of software.

Ah, glorified typewriters 99% of the time?  How are they supposed to
have ushered in a new wave of productivity increases?  Perhaps they
are simply being under-utilized in other capacities?

My apologies for taking things in the wrong direction.


Bill

[PEN-L:9977] Re: Indian Software Industry

[William S. Lear]

On Thu, May 8, 1997 at 11:02:36 (-0700) Louis Proyect writes:
>This is the sort of systems development projects that I have been working
>on for 28 years and they present a completely different set of problems
>than creating shrink-wrapped software like a word-processor. The
>difficulties cut to the heart of the contradictions of capitalism and have
>little to do with psychology or whether such activity is more like
>novel-writing than engineering.
>
>The problem is simply that there are powerful impulses in any capitalist
>institution--including government agencies and universities--to set
>completely arbitrary deadlines based on incomplete specifications.
>Management structures in corporations encourage forced marches and I have
>been on many.

The question is, why did this (lack of predicted productivity gains)
happen in software?  I was trying to answer that specific question,
and trying to refute what I saw as a vastly over-abstract idea from
O'Conner.

>Mostly, this type of procedure is not followed. Projects are started with
>incomplete specifications. They are understaffed and target-dates are
>completely arbitrary. This tendency existed throughout the 60s and 70s and
>has only accelerated in the late 80s and 90s when corporations decide to
>take shortcuts in the face of competition.

And, just as likely, a fully-specified project will fall flat on its
face because half-way through it, you realize that what you are
creating is in fact not what you want.  I think there are simple
issues here with the very nature of the problem itself, rather than an
idiotic Dilbert-esque system (common enough).  Such problems will be
seen, I contend, even in the most democratic (socialist) of
systems---I guess that was one of my points.  Also, the late 80s and
90s were a time of increased competition which caused companies to
skimp on requirements?  If anything, I've noticed a vast increase in
the amount of requirements in the past 10 years, but my knowledge of
these trends is certainly provincial.

>One of the reasons socialism is such an appealing idea is that procedures
>will be common across organizational lines. This will allow software to be
>shared. If there was a single American university system, admissions
>procedures would be simplified. Instead of having 10,000 computer
>programmers working on separate systems at Columbia, Yale, U. of Cal, etc.,
>there would be 500 or so developing software for the entire institution.
>The same thing would of course be true for financial and manufacturing
>institutions. One bank, one automobile company, one steel company, etc.,
>all owned by the people. No advertising, no public relations, no separate
>health and savings plans. I have a book at home called "The Waste of
>Capitalism" or something like that which details this stuff. I should try
>to read it and report on it.

You should, it sounds quite interesting.  The thing I find appealing
about socialism/democracy is that one need not give up a fundamental
human right in order to live.  We need more practical models to point
to and say---see, that's how it could be done!  Very appealing to
computer geeks like me!:-)

I suggest those interested in this should take a look at what the Free
Software Foundation has done.  Coincidentally, our shop (Dejanews) is
almost 100% run on "free" software (Linux operating system, FSF/GNU
tools, etc.).  The amount of sharing of ideas across firms is probably
quite low, but free software does allow some of this to occur.  That's
also one thing notable about Usenet newsgroups---they allow a great
deal of software development to be done by a widely-dispersed set of
people who, more or less, get an equal say in how things are done.


Bill

[PEN-L:9976] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Doug Henwood]

William S. Lear wrote:

>He's overthinking.  I've worked as a professional "software engineer"
>for over a dozen years, and am currently working on "cutting edge"
>stuff (OO and Internet).

I think he was talking about the uses of computers in the workplace, not
the creation of software.

Doug

[PEN-L:9975] Europe

[Doug Henwood]

My favorite right-wing columnist, Christopher Caldwell of the New York
Press, wrote this in the May 7-13 issue. Caldwell's day job is as a
writer/editor at the Weekly Standard, a right-wing rag owned by Rupert
Murdoch and edited by WIlliam Kristol, Irving's son.

"This is the point, although Americans are reluctant to recognize it, of
setting up the European Community: its member countries want to band
together so they don't get divided and conquiered by the monster economy of
the free world [the U.S.].
   Europe, of course, is also a convenient way of getting these countries
off the hook and allowing them to move democracy one step further away from
the people, in hopes of getting a government more like ours, in which the
people don't have to be consulted with much frequency.
   Take the French elections, which President Jacques Chirac called in
order ot ratify France's position in Europe [N]o non-retired voter is
so stupid as to vote to reform the welfare state, that is, to volunteer to
do without benefits that everyone older than him has got and that he's
already paid for. So what Chirac hopes to do is use the European monetary
union to *force* his country into automatic deficit reductions by saying 'I
didn't want to do it, but there was nothing I could do; we had to hit our
targets.'"

Doug

[PEN-L:9974] RE: Globalization

[Michael Perelman]

On the virtual U:  The new emerging model of a university is many bucks on
high tech with the funds made available by depending on a casual teaching
force.  

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

Tel. 916-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:9973] Exporting Apartheid to Sub-Saharan Africa

[Michel Chossudovsky]

"EXPORTING APARTHEID" TO SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

by 

Michel Chossudovsky

Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, author of The Globalization
of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, Third World Network,
Penang and Zed Press, London, 1997. Copyright by Michel Chossudovsky,
Ottawa, 1996. Complete footnotes and sources available from author
Email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]


The right wing Afrikaner Freedom Front (FF) headed by General Constand
Viljoen plans to develop a "Food Corridor" extending across the Southern
part of the continent from Angola to Mozambique. Afrikaner agri-business is
to extend its grip into neighbouring countries with large scale investments
in commercial farming, food processing and eco-tourism. The Afrikaner
unions of the Orange Free State and Eastern Transvaal are partners; the
objective is to set up White-owned farms beyond South Africa's borders. 

The "Food Corridor", however, does not mean "food for the local people". On
the contrary, under the scheme the peasants will loose their land;
small-holders will become farm labourers or tenants on large scale
plantations owned by the Boers. Moreover, the South African Chamber for
Agricultural Development (SACADA) which acts as an umbrella organization is
integrated by several right wing organisations including the Freedom Front
(FF) led by Viljoen and the secret Afrikaner Broederbond. As South African
Defence Force (SADF) Commander in Chief during the Apartheid regime,
General Viljoen had personally ordered the attacks on so-called "African
National Congress Targets" including the blow up of suspected
anti-apartheid activists and critics. As revealed by former spy Craig
Williamson from classified State Security Council documents, Viljoen was
also responsible for Stratcom (Strategic Communications), a covert
organization involved in frame-ups, political assassinations, bombings,
torture, covert propaganda and "dirty tricks campaigns"...(Stefaans
Brummer, "The Web of Stratcoms", Weekly Mail and Guardian. 24 February 1995).

The Freedom Front, although "moderate" in comparison to Eugene
Terre'Blanche's far-right Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), is a racist
political movement committed to the Afrikaner Volksstaat. The
SACADA-Freedom Front initiative has nonetheless the political backing of
the African National Congress as well as the personal blessing of President
Nelson Mandela who has delegated Mpumalanga Premier Matthews Phosa to the
SACADA Board of Governors. All the other governors are members of the
Freedom Front. 

Premier Phosa, a distinguished ANC politician and among the most prosperous
black businessmen in Mpumalanga province (East Transvaal), is the architect
of a  proposed "regional economic block" between Eastern Transvaal,
Mozambique and Swaziland. Premier Phosa is not only firmly behind the
SACADA-Freedom Front initiative, he has also contributed to laying the
political ground work for the expansion of White Afrikaner business
interests into neighbouring countries. Phosa informed the provincial
legislature in 1995 that "he is communicating with Afrikaner leader General
Constand Viljoen to ensure that their separate initiatives are
complementary". 

In discussions with President Mandela, General Viljoen had argued that:

 "settling Afrikaner farmers would stimulate the economies of neighbouring
states, would provide food and employment for locals, and that this would
stem the flow of illegal immigrants into South Africa".(see EU Backs Boers
Trek to Mozambique", Weekly Mail and Guardian, 1 December 1995). 

Viljoen has also held high level meetings on Afrikaner agricultural
investments with representatives of the European Union, the United Nations
and other donor agencies. 

In turn, Pretoria is negotiating with several African governments on behalf
of SACADA and the Freedom Front. The ANC government is anxious to
facilitate the expansion of corporate agri-business into neighbouring
countries. "`Mandela has asked the Tanzanian government to accept Afrikaner
farmers to help develop the agricultural sector'. SACADA has approached
some 12 African countries `interested in White South African farmers'".  In
a venture set up in 1994 under the South African Development Corporation
(SADEVCO), the government of the Congo had granted to the Boers 99 year
leases on agricultural land. President Mandela endorsed the scheme calling
on African nations "to accept the migrants as a kind of foreign aid". 

An earlier trek of White farmers to Zambia and the Congo dating to the
early 1990s met with mixed results. Rather than tied to the interests of
corporate agribusiness (as in the case of SACADA), the impetus was based on
the resettlement of individual (often bankrupt) Afrikaner farmers without
political backing, financial support and the legitimacy of the New South
Africa.

The African host countries have on the whole welcomed the inflow of
Afrikaner investments. With regard to regulatory policies, how

[PEN-L:9972] shadows on the cave wall

[James Devine]

Awhile back, wojtek sokolowski said that it is better >> to analyse social
institutions (e.g. how the production is being organised in the developing
countries) rather than watching trends in economic aggregates which,
paraphrasin Plato, are but shadows cast on the wall of a cave populated by
economists.<<

Sure, we're in a cave, unable to perceive exactly what's going on. But we
have no direct knowledge of many if not most of the phenomena we try to
understand (including the organization of production). We need all the help
from studies of the shadows we can get. And if our theory (or what's really
going on) predicts different shadows than actually occur?


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
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way
and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.

[PEN-L:9971] RE: Globalization

[D Shniad]

Tavis,

I referred to Virtual U merely to point out that there are serious, well
funded efforts to apply computerization to damned near every field.

While I am not suggesting that the attempt to computerize higher
education will necessarily succeed, I think it would be a major error to
assume that it's merely a gimmick that will fold of its own weight.

Sid

> > 
> On Wed, 7 May 1997, D Shniad wrote:
> 
> > Tavis, you obviously haven't heard about the Virtual U model that is
> > being promoted across North America and Europe.
> 
> Sure I have.  I just don't read about every half-assed high-tech gimmick 
> and think, "This is the world of the future." Maybe when I do I'll drop 
> out of politics and become a Buddhist monk.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Tavis
> 
> 

[PEN-L:9970] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Louis Proyect]

Bill Lear:

>
>Also, I believe that the degree of complexity of large projects was
>simply misunderstood.  Getting a small team to work together is
>do-able, but the costs just don't scale very well.
>

Last night's TV news had an item about the "scandal" surrounding cost
overruns and delays on Medicare automation. They expect the project to be
finished in *seven* years. This follows acknowledgement that the IRS
automation has been a total fiasco. Finally, there is open discussion about
the problems implementing some of the draconian features of the new welfare
legislation because the systems requirements to do cross-state policing of
eligibility are too daunting for the forseeable future.

This is the sort of systems development projects that I have been working
on for 28 years and they present a completely different set of problems
than creating shrink-wrapped software like a word-processor. The
difficulties cut to the heart of the contradictions of capitalism and have
little to do with psychology or whether such activity is more like
novel-writing than engineering.

The problem is simply that there are powerful impulses in any capitalist
institution--including government agencies and universities--to set
completely arbitrary deadlines based on incomplete specifications.
Management structures in corporations encourage forced marches and I have
been on many.

There was one exception to this. I worked on an automation of an employee
savings/retirement plan at Mobil Oil in the late 1970s. This plan
incorporated all sorts of subterfuges to allow top management to shelter
income. One senior consultant I worked with volunteered the opinion that he
felt like a felon working on the project.

Since the project had top priority and since Mobil was pretty cash-infused
at the time, they made a decision to nail down the specifications with
exactitude before any programming was done. In other words they had a
detailed blueprint before any construction took place. Next, they staffed
the project adequately. Finally, they came up with realistic schedules. It
was a four year job and came in on time.

Mostly, this type of procedure is not followed. Projects are started with
incomplete specifications. They are understaffed and target-dates are
completely arbitrary. This tendency existed throughout the 60s and 70s and
has only accelerated in the late 80s and 90s when corporations decide to
take shortcuts in the face of competition.

One of the reasons socialism is such an appealing idea is that procedures
will be common across organizational lines. This will allow software to be
shared. If there was a single American university system, admissions
procedures would be simplified. Instead of having 10,000 computer
programmers working on separate systems at Columbia, Yale, U. of Cal, etc.,
there would be 500 or so developing software for the entire institution.
The same thing would of course be true for financial and manufacturing
institutions. One bank, one automobile company, one steel company, etc.,
all owned by the people. No advertising, no public relations, no separate
health and savings plans. I have a book at home called "The Waste of
Capitalism" or something like that which details this stuff. I should try
to read it and report on it.

Louis Proyect

[PEN-L:9969] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Laurie Dougherty]

Harold Salzman in Software by Design talks about the constraints on efficiency
imposed by things like personal style, institutional culture in software
design.  Paul Osterman, looking at the uses of automation, found that work
reorganization (in the direction of participation, teamwork, etc.) was
essential to realizing productivity gains.  However, he was looking at lean
production models in which participation is not really a democratic process,
but a way to capture more of the employee's knowledge.  This eventually is
translated into higher levels of automation.  "Giving wisdom to the machine."

There's a whole lot of jobs I'd gladly give a robot.  I'd like to talk about
that.  What comes next.  How can we share both work and income?

-Laurie 

[PEN-L:9968] Suggestion for books

[Peter Bohmer]

I am co-teaching a 32 credit program at the Evergreen State College for
sophomores and up in the fall and winter and am trying to get my book list
together.  The program is in political economy, defined broadly--much more
than radical economics. Anyway, I am looking for a really good book
(books) on the following.  Ideally, they are readable, passionate, and
have some good left analysis
Please send me privately or on the list any suggestions for BOOKS on 
one or more of the following topics.
If people are interested I will compile and list them.  (note: I am quite
familiar with the literature and the debate on Pen-L)

1. Global capitalism today--should have some material on
neo-liberalism, the IMF-World Bank, global restructuring, impact on South
and North, etc., also challenges to neo-liberalism. What do you think of
the new book by Wm. Greider, "One World, Ready or Not". 
Suggested books--

2. Book on the causes of the growing income inequality today in
the U.S., hopefully that deals with the racial and gender dimension of it,
a readable and substantive analysis of late 20th century U.S. capitalism
Suggestions--

   3. Anything else you really recommend for a full-time political 
economy class --on racism, gender, the labor and other social movements, 
alternatives and resistance in the U.S. and other countries--the best 
book you have read in the last three years that was readable.
SUggested book--


Thanks for your help, Pete Bohmer
..  

[PEN-L:9967] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Laurie Dougherty]

Techie types are very well organized, just not in unions.  They are all over
the net with vehicles for skills transfer and job hunting.  WE need to find
ways to tap into what is out there instead of trying to force everyone into
some mythic model of the CIO working in the Fordist factory under a military
Keynesian regime.  In the Wages of Whiteness, a study of race and class in the
19th century, David Roediger talks about how white workers often rejected the
concept of wage slavery because they were free men.  The CIO emerged because
the AFL was in denial of the reality of mass production.  And so it goes.

planbet into direct competition with everyone else.  But there real areas where
theret into direct competition with everyone else.  But there is a trend to
increase that kind of competition.  I recently participated in a study of 
Boston area firms.  In one of the (not so world class) Boston hospitals a 
personnel director told me that during the nursing shortage of the 80s they 
pioneered in recruiting nurses from the Philippines which other hospitals 
later did as well. Now hospitals are merging and closing and downsizing like 
crazy, this cohort is in competition for the work.  I don't know to what 
extent they are integrated into nursing organizations in the area, or their
expectations have been framed by the standard of living in the US. I don't know
that the impact of this cohort is any different than a cohort defined by some
other characteristic.  I do know it exists.

Michael Perelman asked what it's like on the shop floor.  I'm a few years
removed from it, but what I know is that on the shop floor I left in 1991,
those people who were left were working along side robots and CNCs assembling
components from all over the world.  Meanwhile back on pen-l, a group of highly
intelligent people are conducting a global conversation almost in real time,
the import of which is that none of this really matters.

There's two kinds of people on the shop floors in the US.  Older workers (40+)
native to the US or from earlier waves of immigration who have used the 
seniority system (a sacred cow if there ever was one - constructed to 
counteract abuses by capital in a long gone era, but totally insufficient to 
cope with conditions now) to protect their jobs and standard of living, the 
rest of the world go hang.  The second kind of shop floor workers are 
immigrants. Over and over again I listened to managers talk about how hard 
working immigrant workers were and how they weren't as "materialistic" as US 
workers, didn't need as much, didn't get paid as much.

-Laurie 

[PEN-L:9966] Re: Barbara Ehrenreich and DSA?

[Louis Proyect]

Ron Baiman:

>Louis,
>
>   Yes, Ehrenreich is an Honorary Chair of DSA and quite active - 
>recently she spoke at the DSA youth conference in Columbus Ohio.
>
>   You can smear DSA's "pretty good name" as much as you'd like too 
>- we can take it - isn't that what "democratic" socialism is all about!
>
>   I thought her "deviationist" thinking in the Book reviews was quite 
>interesting.
>

Speaking of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, here is an interesting item that
was posted to the Nation Magazine Forum:

Barbara's Bad Science
by Chris Vail, 5/5/97

I had the chance to browse Ehrenreich's book yesterday, and I read her
chapter on the first human sacrifice. It represented very bad science.
First of all, none of her references were primary evidence; all were the
interpretations of other researchers, which she was relaying uncritically.
Secondly, she talked mostly about agricultural societies in historical
times, and she relied upon stories from the Bible as evidence of human
sacrifice. Thirdly, she has missed out on some rather fascinating evidence
of human sacrifice 40,000 years ago (she was talking 3,000 years ago!).
Originally, humans lived in large communities without walls, or armies.
Originally, humans sacrificed their elite adults. Originally, the elite
adults consented to the sacrifice. Human sacrifice was part of organized
religion, a means of explaining the world. It came relatively late in human
development, long after the use of fire and the development of big game
hunting (although the prevalence of big game animals during the last Ice
Age permitted large communities of humans to live together, develop complex
religion, and engage in human sacrifice). But humans had gotten over their
fear of wild animals (and wild animals had forgotten humans were prey
animals) long before then.

[PEN-L:9965] Re: Indian Software Industry

[William S. Lear]

On Thu, May 8, 1997 at 09:32:55 (-0700) Doug Henwood writes:
>Speaking of computers, Jim O'Connor suggested to me recently, citing the
>work of the late Rick Gordon of UC-Santa Cruz, that the reason that
>computers have not had the much hyped productivity payoff is that the
>social organization of U.S. workplaces is still very
>competitive-individualist, while taking maximum advantage of computers
>would require much more cooperative structures.
>
>How does this strike PEN-Lers?

He's overthinking.  I've worked as a professional "software engineer"
for over a dozen years, and am currently working on "cutting edge"
stuff (OO and Internet).  There are often very real barriers to
working with other people on things like software projects that have
nothing to do with "competitive-individualist" mindsets.  If you
imagine writing software as something more akin to writing a novel
than manufacturing, you'll get the idea---try to imagine collaborating
with even 5 other people.  The issues involved are often that it's
quite difficult to merge "styles"---imagine Proust, Borges, Foucault,
Balzac, and yourself trying to put out something worth reading (and,
software is much more difficult than this---computers are very
unforgiving).  If you try to standardize too much, individual output
is diminished because the "standard" doesn't "fit" the way the person
thinks.  Also, the tools required to share knowledge are quite
primitive.  I am fond of saying that we are in the pre-history of
programming and that we are using, despite the hype, very blunt
instruments for sharing information, among other things.

Also, I believe that the degree of complexity of large projects was
simply misunderstood.  Getting a small team to work together is
do-able, but the costs just don't scale very well.

Notions of "competitive-individualist" mindsets just don't help, in my
opinion.


Bill

[PEN-L:9964] Re: Barbara Ehrenreich and DSA?

[BAIMAN]

Louis,

Yes, Ehrenreich is an Honorary Chair of DSA and quite active - 
recently she spoke at the DSA youth conference in Columbus Ohio.

You can smear DSA's "pretty good name" as much as you'd like too 
- we can take it - isn't that what "democratic" socialism is all about!

I thought her "deviationist" thinking in the Book reviews was quite 
interesting.

Regards,

Ron


 **

Ron Baiman
Dept. of Economics
Roosevelt UniversityFax: 312-341-3680
430 S. Michigan Ave
Chicago, Illinois 60605 Voice:  312-341-3694

**

On Tue, 29 Apr 1997, Louis Proyect wrote:

> In the latest Nation magazine Barbara Ehrenreich reviews 3 books on the
> subject of war while Susan Faludi reviews Ehrenreich's new book on the very
> same subject called "Blood Rites". I found all of it completely hostile to
> traditional socialist thinking on the subject. Is Ehrenreich still with DSA?
> I want to respond to this stuff on the net but don't want to smear DSA's
> pretty good name.
> 
> Louis Proyect
> 
> 

[PEN-L:9963] Re: whose consumption

[Michael Perelman]

June, Chase has not responded.  Would it be difficult to xerox the
relevant part for me.  I would like to use it in a paper I am preparing.

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

Tel. 916-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:9962] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Anders Schneiderman]

At 08:43 AM 5/8/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Louis: One of the things that is so interesting about the software
>industry is that it has resisted the deskilling process that Stanley
>Aronowitz and William DeFazio wrote about in "The Jobless Future". I have
>seen efforts to mechanize and Taylorize the programming business since the
>mid 1970s, but it has come to naught. 

Deskilling does go on in the computer industry, but at the same time new
skills keep popping up as new hardware creates new possibilities.  What
people like Aronowitz don't get about the computer industry is that it's a
very young industry where the technology has been changing at breakneck
speed.  As a result, not only are there always new skills to learn, but
there's also a healthy market fixing the inevitable screwups that occur
when you play with new toys before they're ready.  

>The latest magic bullet is something
>called "object orientation" (OO). It has been a fiasco. OO tries to create
>the equivalent of replacable modules, such as the kind that are found in
>hardware assemblies. Companies have tried and abandoned OO because they
>discover that software algorithms and data are constantly changing to
>reflect new company policies. 

I think the object-oriented debate is a lot like the whole word vs. phonics
debate:  it's a red herring.  A few years ago, NASA, which plays with every
new computing fad that comes along, did a study of programming techniques
and toys and found, much to its suprise, that no method or toy was
correlated with increased productivity.  What was?  The people skills:  how
well teams of programmers worked together, how well they were managed, how
good the communication between the programmers/developers and the users
was, etc.  This is why so many promising techniques crash and burn:  they
aren't worth a damn if they're badly managed (incidentally, object-oriented
approaches are making a comeback under the Net, albeit with a lot less
furvor over OO ideological purity).

>Louis: I don't expect Indian programmers or their American counterparts to
>ever organize. This is basically a petty-bourgeois layer. This is another
>flaw in Aronowitz and DeFazio's analysis. He believes that there is some
>kind of proletarianization going on. This is ridiculous. The highest per
>capita membership in the Liberatarian Party of any corporation in the US
>is at Microsoft. 

And a lot of them are probably "Lockheed Libertarians" (i.e., greedy
selfish pigs).

Anders Schneiderman
Progressive Communications

[PEN-L:9961] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Doug Henwood]

Speaking of computers, Jim O'Connor suggested to me recently, citing the
work of the late Rick Gordon of UC-Santa Cruz, that the reason that
computers have not had the much hyped productivity payoff is that the
social organization of U.S. workplaces is still very
competitive-individualist, while taking maximum advantage of computers
would require much more cooperative structures.

How does this strike PEN-Lers?

Doug

[PEN-L:9960] FW: Public Transportation Rally

[Bove, Roger E.]

 --
From: Philadsa
To: amhoffma; MacMan2; jantzen; leonobol; winant; lsekaric; BerniceS; 
jhogan; emoore; AlEmily; gdolph; straussjohn; strieb; skeptic; rbove; 
landreau; StahlBen; siftartj; hkadran; tobiabj; sullivmj; sschatz; shapsj; 
rbrand; shoshana; clampetlundquist; peacedel; QuinnKM; Dgkpfp
Subject: Public Transportation Rally
Date: Sunday, May 04, 1997 9:07PM

WASHINGTON, DC ISTEA RALLY
Northeast Corridor Rally Train
Tuesday, May 6, 1997

Train departure:  7:30 am from 30th Street Station
Rally: 12:00 noon on Captial steps


 On September 30, 1997, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency
Act (ISTEA) will expire. The act provides the framework for the flow of
federal funds for transportation authorities like SEPTA and, according to 
the
Clean Air Council, "has empowered residents and local legislators to
revitalize public transportation, demand better environmental standards, and
more effectively allocate transportation dollars. Pressure on Congress in 
the
next few months is vital to ensure that this legislation is not weakened, 
but
emerges stronger.

The special, free rally train will be bringing Northeast Corridor ISTEA
advocates to Washington from New York, Newark, Trenton, Philadelphia,
Wilmington and Baltimore. Reservations are necessary. Contact Lauren 
Townsend
of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Area Coalition for Transportation (ACT),
(215) 580-7013.

[PEN-L:9959] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Anders Schneiderman]

At 07:56 AM 5/8/97 -0700, you wrote:
>My understanding of the Indian software industry is different from that
>which Louis expressed.  I was under the impression for large projects with
>a modular structure, that the Indians were actually superior -- so long as
>the jobs were well defined.  I have also been reading about the lack of a
>cowboy mentality, which makes them less good for certain type of projects.

The usefulness of the cowboy mentality is vastly overrated--in no small
part because it fits the American propaganda about entrepreneurial
individuals (and I speak here as somebody who likes playing cowboy hacker).
 If you did a body count, you'd find that the vast majority of folks who
get paid to program work on projects where hacking is cheap at the
beginning and very expensive when it comes to maintaining the sucker.  Most
U.S. programmers spend their days plodding through the boring tripe that
makes corporate America run, mostly databases of some sort.

As far as Indian programmers are concerned, if a large corp is hiring folks
from overseas to act as cogs in a wheel, do you think they'd go looking for
cowboys?  I do think there are some cultural differences on the whole
between Indian and U.S. programmers--which you'd expect given that they
come from very different cultures--but I don't think it's that relevant for
most programming jobs.  The reason AIG screwed up didn't have anything to
do with Indian programmers; it was because the company was run by Dogberts.

What I find interesting about the fuss around foreign programmers is that
no one in this country is using it as a leverage point for forcing
corporate America to deal with the inner city.  As someone who's taught
programming, I think lot of programming is fairly
straightforward--certainly much less complex than your average skilled
construction job.  Rather than bashing foreign skilled workers, we ought to
ensure that this industry is opened up to poor people, particularly poor
people of color, in this country.

Anders Schneiderman
Progressive Communications

[PEN-L:9958] The law of inflated claims

[Michael Perelman]

We economists tend to make extravagent claims when we discuss our
vision.  All work is (is not) being globalized.  Would we not do better
to take a step back and follow the old master of dialectics to look for
the forces that make for globalization and those that impede it?

I think that some of the new moves toward globalization are dramtic and
yet overdramatized.  We forget how globalized the colonial system was.  
Even Smith wrote:

How much commerce and navigation ..., how many ship-builders, sailors,
sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring
together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come
from the remotest corners of the world?  [Smith 1776,I.i.11, p. 23] 

In my Classical Political Economy book I wrote about how the British
sent plant explorers about, including Darwin, to raid the planet for
plants so that they could, say, grow rubber malaysia where masses of
Indian labor were close at hand -- shades of modern bio-technology.

Yet, the modern telecommunications revolution obviously goes far beyond
the laying of transatlantic cables for telegraph communication.

How do all these changes affect things on the shop floor or in the back
office?
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 916-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:9957] Re: telecoms

[Doug Henwood]

Michael Eisenscher wrote:

>Add a column showing total telecom employment; another showing %
>unionization.  It would make for a more interesting story.

Yes, interesting indeed, since it would probably require an explanation of
why the telecom wage premium has increased as union density has declined.


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: 
web: 

[PEN-L:9956] Re: Tavis, you're *still* wrong

[Michael Eisenscher]

If I may be so bold as to intervene in this discussion --

1.  To demonstrate a significant shift it should not be necessary to prove
that virtually all, or nearly all work in a category has been "globalized."

2.  It might be helpful to distinguish between personal and businesses services.

3.  The issue of markets is important, but let's not confuse market focus
with how or where a product or service is produced.

4.  Regarding language, I can't recall the source, but somewhere in the last
couple of years I seem to recall that publishing companies in the U.S. have
taken to shipping their manuscripts to Asia for input by workers who cannot
read a word of English.  For some time American Airlines (and others) have
shipped their ticket data input to Barbados.

5.  With respect to semiconductor mfg., leading edge companies are setting
up parallel computer controlled mfg. facilities around the U.S. and in
Europe, the Paicifc Islands, and Asia.  Chips are designed and initial
prototype mfg. runs are done in the Silicon Valley.  Once reliable yields
are achieved, mfg. is transferred to satellite plants where identical
production lines are programmed to mfg. in quantity.  All that need be
transferred is the computer instruction and a few engineers to monitor
output.  This was not possible even ten years ago.

6.  It would be helpful to take a more differentiated view.  Not all
industries are equal with respect to their vulnerability to globalization.
Tortilla mfg. in LA can't be relocated because the market requires and
demands daily delivery of fresh product.  Pool cleaners can be recruited
anywhere but they must be physically located where the pools are.  Generally
products or services that lend themselves to computerization or involve
information management are more vulnerable.  Travel agencies can now
subcontract their phone sales and bookings to prison labor across the
nation.  Globalization is an uneven process affecting different sectors and
different segments of the labor market in different ways.

7.  Globalization is not caused by but is facilitated by increasing computer
power and the declining power/price ratios made possible by each new
generation of microprocessor.  Digital technology makes possible
reengineering (re-Taylorization) of complex tasks and skilled work that
previously could be performed only by highly trained workers.  The extent
and penetration of this process will be accelerated as elements of the work
process can be subjected to electronic execution or control.  This is likely
to take a quantum leap once Artificial Intelligence capabilities are refined
and integrated into production processes, allowing computer programs to
appropriate knowledge and discretion now held by skilled workers.

8.  Never underestimate the vulnerability of a complex system to meltdown
("normal accident").  No computer program written has ever outperformed the
capacity for flexible judgement of the trained and experienced human brain.
The most powerful use of digital technologies is to augment, not replace,
the worker (an argument made persuasively some years ago by David Noble and
generally ignored by profit-driven short horizon management).

Well, that's about two cents worth of opinion.  So I'll stop there.

Michael.

At 11:40 PM 5/7/97 -0700, Tavis Barr wrote:
>
>[I wear the title proudly. :) ]
>
>On Wed, 7 May 1997, D Shniad wrote:
>
>> Tavis:
>> 
>> My contention is that service markets aren't as globalizable as 
>> manufacturing markets.
>> 
>> Sid:
>> 
>> I don't think this is anything more than a contention.
>
>Allright, I'll use some data.  It comes from a data set I'm working on 
>that studies employers in four different areas (New York, Kalamazoo, 
>Philadelphia, Pittsburgh).  Admittedly it might be a non-random sample 
>geographically, but it's what I have handy.  The question is "What is 
>the main market for your firm's goods or services?" and the answers 
>(weighted by firm size and to correct for industry oversampling) are:
>
>The Neighborhood   40.2%
>Metropolitan Area  42.1
>National   10.1
>International  7.6
>[N=316]
>
>For those in the service sector (SIC1=9), the answers are:
>
>The Neighborhood   34.9%
>Metropolitan Area  54.7
>National   8.5
>International  1.9
>[N=106]
>
>I don't have a big enough sample in manufacturing and telecommunications 
>to get consistent results.  :(  There must be some big national marketing 
>survey somewhere that has a similar question, though
>
>
>> Tavis:
>> 
>> The same types of jobs you describe in telecommunications (operator 
>> services) have their analogues in many other sectors: Claims processing 
>> in health care, credit card and loan processing in banking, catalog sales 
>> in retail trade.  They can all be moved anywhere around the country 
>> (though I suspect that language difficulties at least would make it hard 
>> to move them across borders).  
>> 
>> Sid:
>> 
>> The work do

[PEN-L:9955] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Louis N Proyect]

I was not arguing that efforts to export projects to India have been
unsuccessful. I was instead stating that there is a lot of hype about
disappearing American jobs in the field. 

Louis

On Thu, 8 May 1997, Michael Perelman wrote:

> My understanding of the Indian software industry is different from that
> which Louis expressed.  I was under the impression for large projects with
> a modular structure, that the Indians were actually superior -- so long as
> the jobs were well defined.  I have also been reading about the lack of a
> cowboy mentality, which makes them less good for certain type of projects.
> 
> I suspect that some of this difference reflects the lack of access of
> children to computers, but I don't know.
> 
> In any case, I would like to learn more about this.
>  -- 
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
> 
> Tel. 916-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
> 

[PEN-L:9954] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Louis N Proyect]

On Thu, 8 May 1997, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:

> 
> I presume similar arguments were tossed around when Frederick Winslow Taylor
> started replacing skilled workers with "hacks" controlled through his
> time-motion studies.  The quality might have gone down then and may, as
> well, go down now (for that matter, Windows 95 is a piece of shit comparing
> to Windows 3.1) -- but since when capitalists started to care about making
> quality products?
> 

Louis: One of the things that is so interesting about the software
industry is that it has resisted the deskilling process that Stanley
Aronowitz and William DeFazio wrote about in "The Jobless Future". I have
seen efforts to mechanize and Taylorize the programming business since the
mid 1970s, but it has come to naught. The latest magic bullet is something
called "object orientation" (OO). It has been a fiasco. OO tries to create
the equivalent of replacable modules, such as the kind that are found in
hardware assemblies. Companies have tried and abandoned OO because they
discover that software algorithms and data are constantly changing to
reflect new company policies. Furthermore, in a large business enterprise,
there are enormously complex interactions that defy the effort to
"modularize" them.  I have been working for the past year on a project
that started in 1992 to automate the facilities management department at
Columbia using OO. I think most people realize at this point that OO
hindered things. Everybody assumed that the facilities management system
would be part of a university-wide client server OO architecture.
Meanwhile, in the last year or so Web based Intranet applications seem to
have much more promise and the architecture of 5 years ago seems sort of
outmoded. 


> Deskilling is not about product quality but about control of labour.
> "Imported" programmers may lack the skills of their domestic counterparts --
> but they have two highly desirable (from the management's view point)
> qualities: they are cheap, and they are alienated from the local labour
> force -- which makes it unlikely that they will organize.  
> 

Louis: I don't expect Indian programmers or their American counterparts to
ever organize. This is basically a petty-bourgeois layer. This is another
flaw in Aronowitz and DeFazio's analysis. He believes that there is some
kind of proletarianization going on. This is ridiculous. The highest per
capita membership in the Liberatarian Party of any corporation in the US
is at Microsoft. 

[PEN-L:9953] Re: Walras vs. Sraffa

[BAIMAN]

Dear Comrades,

At the risk of wading into this with little time to thoroughly go 
through the lengthy posts especially Ajit and Gil (I have perused them to 
around April 22 or so), I think the following may add to this debate (Gil 
-Robin - you may recognize this!)

a) In agreement with Gil, Steve Marglin also discounts the 
importance of reswitching as a count against the NC-Walrasian framework arguing that 
similar 
that similar critiques can be applied to "Neo-Marxist" models (which in 
Marglin's typology are closer to what GIL/Ajit are labeling Sraffian 
models) - this is in GROWTH DISTRIBUTION AND PROFITS.  Also Marglin ends 
up trying to integrate an investment function (what he calls a 
Neo-Keynesian model) into his Neo-Marxist model on the grounds that some 
combination of these two would represent the most accurate Macro growth 
model.  Thus a recognition of a need for a more careful modeling of 
future oriented goods like investment and savings.  David (Gordon) I 
believe was also in concurrance with this approach as he taught a full 
course basically on this book incorporating other readings from Lance 
Taylor, Becker, Scott, etc. - I'm not trying to drop names here - just ot 
give some idea of where I got turned onto this and its geneology!

b) In agreement with Ajit and Robin, (and Marglin), the basic 
political implication of the Walrasian NC model that growth and 
distribution depends on Biology  (rate of popu;ation growth as full 
employment is presumed) , technology, and preferences (from out of the 
sky) cannot be ignored.  The neglect of the function of class power both 
in the labor and in investment markets is the major political implication 
of this model.  There is no "surplus" being expropriated and turned over 
to captialists , the non-classical , neo-classical implication cannot be 
ignored.

c) On the issue of supply, i think we have to get back to 
Sraffa's original point regarding the general absence of upward sloping 
long-term marginal cost curves i.e. supply curves.  We have to regognize 
that the Walrasian model is therefore basically a "short-term" model when 
"endownments - ie. class structure" and  major long-term investments are 
given.  As a short-term model I have no problem with it.

c) In the long term is where "social choice" and "endogeneous 
preference formation" are critical.  These I would argue points to 
social wage setting and technognology investment paremeters of class 
struggle.  This is how histroy and laws of motion which is what we are 
presumably more interested in are made.  Robin's QUIET REVOLUTION IN 
WELFARE ECONOMICS lays out some important results on endogenous 
preference formation.  The social choice aspect I believe is best 
captured through the kind of structuralist I-O  DYNAMIC and 
explicitly class struggle parameterized framework that Sraffian or 
"Neo-Marxist" models represent.
The key here is the distinction between INDIVIDUAL CHOICE 
represented by NC walrasian models and social choice  (and democratic 
planning) represented by the other models.  This also is why I think 
competitive game theory would have to applied pretty carefully if at all 
to theis higher level of social choice parameter setting.


In Solidarity,

Ron


**

Ron Baiman
Dept. of Economics
Roosevelt UniversityFax: 312-341-3680
430 S. Michigan Ave
Chicago, Illinois 60605 Voice:  312-341-3694

**

[PEN-L:9952] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 07:32 AM 5/8/97 -0700, Louis Proyect wrote:
>
>The notion that programming jobs are being exported to India is something
>that people in my field discuss often. Not only is this a constant worry,
>there is also the worry that computer programmers from India will be
>imported into the United States. Two years ago, the AIG, a NYC based
>multinational financial corporation, fired all of its computer programmers
>and replaced them with Indian consultants. This was reported widely in the
>trade press and even became an item on the network news as a sign of white
>collar decline.
>
>Leaving aside the racist implications of a lot of the reporting on the
>Indian connection, there are a couple of comments I can make as an industry
>insider. First of all, AIG simply couldn't make things happen with the new
>staff. They lacked the breadth of experience the long-in-the-tooth in-house
>staff had acquired over decades. (My experience, by the way, is that
>American corporations have shot themselves in the foot with a lot of the
>downsizing that goes on in EDP. They view systems building as a simple
>technical task that can be done by hackers. Hackers, by and large, don't
>understand systems analysis. Furthermore, systems analysis can not be
>taught in a book. It is a skill that is tied to living experience.)


I presume similar arguments were tossed around when Frederick Winslow Taylor
started replacing skilled workers with "hacks" controlled through his
time-motion studies.  The quality might have gone down then and may, as
well, go down now (for that matter, Windows 95 is a piece of shit comparing
to Windows 3.1) -- but since when capitalists started to care about making
quality products?

Deskilling is not about product quality but about control of labour.
"Imported" programmers may lack the skills of their domestic counterparts --
but they have two highly desirable (from the management's view point)
qualities: they are cheap, and they are alienated from the local labour
force -- which makes it unlikely that they will organize.  
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:9951] downsizing

[James Devine]

Louis notes: >>My experience, by the way, is that American corporations
have shot themselves in the foot with a lot of the downsizing ...<<

This is something that a lot of the business press has been saying, even
outside of EDP. But downsizing has been pushed onto corporations by (1)
creditors and (2) competition. Also, despite the downside of downsizing
from an individual corporation's perspective (loss of experienced and loyal
personnel, etc.), the wave of downsizing has increased the degree of
insecurity of workers on the job, discouraging raises. It's one reason why
the current 4.9 % unemployment rate in the US has greater "oomph" (is
associated with a larger cost of job loss) than a similar unemployment rate
would have 15 years ago. That is, it's one reason why 4.9 % unemployment is
associated less with inflation. Also, it helps explain why the overall US
profit rate has soared of late. 


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
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way
and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.

[PEN-L:9950] Re: Indian Software Industry

[Michael Perelman]

My understanding of the Indian software industry is different from that
which Louis expressed.  I was under the impression for large projects with
a modular structure, that the Indians were actually superior -- so long as
the jobs were well defined.  I have also been reading about the lack of a
cowboy mentality, which makes them less good for certain type of projects.

I suspect that some of this difference reflects the lack of access of
children to computers, but I don't know.

In any case, I would like to learn more about this.
 -- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 916-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:9949] DPRK Hails Struggle Of Working Class

[SHAWGI TELL]

 An editorial in Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the Workers'
Party of Korea, salutes the working class of all lands who have
"faithfully upheld the revolutionary banner of the class in its
protracted and rigorous struggle." The editorial further states:
"The workers of all countries have valiantly waged a fierce
struggle to smash the bulwark of capital with the red flag firmly
in their hands, powerfully advancing the cause of socialism. This
flag was a banner of victory and glory, revolutionary unity and
solidarity. If they uphold the flag, the workers and other people
will win and if they abandon it, they will die."
 The editorial hails the Korean working class for its
resolute struggle against U.S. imperialism and reaction and its
agents in south Korea. 


Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:9948] 1.3 Million Cubans Rally In Revolution Square

[SHAWGI TELL]

 The flood of Cubans into Havana's Revolution Square began in
the earliest hours of May Day; by the time the rally officially
began, it was clear that the crowd has surpassed the record of
1.2 million who gathered for the May Day rally in 1996. Carrying
Cuban flags, banners denouncing the 37-year old U.S. blockade and
portraits, they arrived by train, bus, bike, and foot in a
continuous flow that went on for hours. 
 The tremendous mobilization of workers, women, youth,
students and seniors - more than one in ten Cubans participated
in the rally - served as an overwhelming tribute to the resolve
of the Cuban people to defend the gains of their Revolution, to
defend their sovereignty, dignity and independence. 
 Present on the stage were President Fidel Castro, Vice
President Carlos Lage, congressional leader Ricardo Alarcon and
Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, along with other social,
religious and cultural personalities.
 In a May Day editorial, Granma, the organ of the Communist
Party of Cuba, reported that membership in the Party has been 
rising faster during the Special Period then ever before. An
average of 46,000 are joining the party every year, compared to
an average of around 27,000 during the 1980s.


Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:9947] Indian Software Industry

[Louis Proyect]

Sid Schniad:

>But the key thing is that a great of this work is computer-based and doesn't 
>involve speaking at all.  The maquila-based postal sorting (by Spanish-
>speaking workers sorting mail that's located in Chicago) is prototypical of 
>what I'm describing.  By the same token, remote trouble analysis of the 
>phone system can be done in the same locale as where the trouble is or 
>across the world.  
>
>It's not just low end jobs that we're talking about, either.  The Indian 
>software industry is state-of-the-art in sophistication, but it pays wages
that 
>are a fraction of those paid software writers in Europe and North America.  
>This is what makes Robert Reich's promotion of education, training and 
>skills such a meaningless response to capital's restructuring of work;
capital 
>doesn't have to choose between high skills and high wages on the one hand 
>and low skills and low wages on the other.  It can have *both*.
>

The notion that programming jobs are being exported to India is something
that people in my field discuss often. Not only is this a constant worry,
there is also the worry that computer programmers from India will be
imported into the United States. Two years ago, the AIG, a NYC based
multinational financial corporation, fired all of its computer programmers
and replaced them with Indian consultants. This was reported widely in the
trade press and even became an item on the network news as a sign of white
collar decline.

Leaving aside the racist implications of a lot of the reporting on the
Indian connection, there are a couple of comments I can make as an industry
insider. First of all, AIG simply couldn't make things happen with the new
staff. They lacked the breadth of experience the long-in-the-tooth in-house
staff had acquired over decades. (My experience, by the way, is that
American corporations have shot themselves in the foot with a lot of the
downsizing that goes on in EDP. They view systems building as a simple
technical task that can be done by hackers. Hackers, by and large, don't
understand systems analysis. Furthermore, systems analysis can not be
taught in a book. It is a skill that is tied to living experience.)

Right now there is a significant shortage of experienced computer
professionals to fill existing jobs. Surprisingly, many of these jobs are
in mainframe Cobol slots which supposedly were disappearing. Columbia
University has a great deal of difficulty attracting Cobol programmers, who
only 3 years ago were encouraged to think of themselves as unemployable
dinosaurs. Many of the jobs, by the way, are tied to implementing Year 2000
conversions. This problem stems from the inability of American corporations
to plan ahead. Any fool knew 20 years ago that new systems should
accomodate a change in the century. Did this prevent new systems from being
built with yymmdd? Of course not.

Louis Proyect

[PEN-L:9946] FW: BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1997

RELEASED TODAY:  Preliminary seasonally-adjusted annual rates of 
productivity change in the first quarter were:  2.1 percent in the 
business sector and 2.0 percent in the nonfarm business sector.  In 
both sectors, first-quarter productivity gains were larger than those 
posted in the previous three quarters.  In manufacturing, productivity 
changes in the first quarter were:  3.1 percent in manufacturing; 3.4 
percent in durable goods manufacturing; and 3.5 percent in nondurable 
goods manufacturing 

The robust U.S. economy is poised for even stronger growth the next 
six months The National Association of Purchasing Management says 
they expect the prices of the goods they buy for their corporations to 
rise  0.7 percent this year, a signal that inflation is not likely to 
accelerate sharply.  In the December survey, members predicted no 
change in those costs this year.  The managers also expect the costs 
of labor and fringe benefits to rise a net 2.4 percent this year, 
below the 2.8 percent increase in employment costs that they expected 
in the December survey (Wall Street Journal, page A2).

Factory orders slipped 1.6 percent in March, the largest drop in seven 
months, pulled down by declines in aircraft, motor vehicles, and 
communications equipment, the Commerce Department said (Washington 
Post, page C10; Wall Street Journal, page A2).

Orders placed with factories fell, indicating that the manufacturing 
economy might be cooling.  And inventories increased by 0.2 percent in 
March after having risen in February, suggesting that production may 
have outpaced demand.  But a survey of purchasing managers found that 
they expected corporate revenue to rise 7 percent this year as the 
economy continues to grow solidly with only modest inflation (New 
York Times, page A2).

The government's "leading statistics official" Everett M. Ehrlich, 48, 
will leave his post as Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic 
Affairs at the end of the month to set up a Washington, D.C., 
consulting firm.  He cited financial reasons for being unable to 
commit to another four years at the agency, which would involve the 
2000 Census.  He pointed to two main accomplishments:  Refocusing the 
statistical system to capture rapid economic change and re-engineering 
the Census by, for example, installing sampling methods that are 
expected to be used to count nonrespondents (New York Times, page 
D5; Washington Post, page A19).

[PEN-L:9945] RE: Globalization

[Tavis Barr]

On Wed, 7 May 1997, D Shniad wrote:

> Tavis, you obviously haven't heard about the Virtual U model that is
> being promoted across North America and Europe.

Sure I have.  I just don't read about every half-assed high-tech gimmick 
and think, "This is the world of the future." Maybe when I do I'll drop 
out of politics and become a Buddhist monk.


Cheers,
Tavis