[PEN-L:10324] Re: planning and democracy
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker) Subject: [PEN-L:10323] Re: planning and democracy . . . Max is right (except for the last line). To add definition to Max's "public ownership of capital and public control of its allocation", I'd mention the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat". . . . Enjoyed this, and I'm also going to enjoy watching someone else catch javelins for a while. . . . The problem with such a smooth transition is that it begs the question of the need for any transition at all. If the cure for bourgeois democracy is simply "more democracy", then we might as well get on with the practical work on taxes and transfers rather than speculating about alternative systems. . . . Hear hear. Not just taxes and transfers but regulation, public investment, etc. etc. . . . something that doesn't yet exist? Have socialists forgotten how to dream in colour (or are they just ashamed to try)? One explanation is that time dreaming is time that might be spent more profitably. You have your choice of foregone paths about which to feel guilty. . . . And there's the social democratic dilemma in a nutshell: it's not simply that social-democratic policy prescriptions are objectionable, it's that in order to be palatable to the "mainstream" they always have to be repackaged as even more innocuous then they are. Social democratic policies can never be innocuous enough, at least until they are completely vapid -- at which point, they are readily dismissed by "the mainstream" as vapid. I think the issue here is the admittedly mysterious one of how the working class mobilizes. My hope is that when it does the social-democratic parties will be much less vapid or they will be supplanted by better social-democrats not unlike my humble self. Cheers, MBS == Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200 202-775-8810 (voice) 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions here do not necessarily represent the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===
[PEN-L:10325] Tom Walker's pronouncements
I find Walker's denounceations from on high of the NDP's current election platform and position within the on going debate to be both uninformed and counterproductive. As one of many economists across the country that was involved, to a greater or lesser extent, in developing the alternative federal budget (which the NDP nationally has virtually adopted), I am offended by Walker's ignorant attack on the policy that so many of economists and other representatives of non-goverment- tal and women's and labour groups developed. In short, he should do some of the work, or shut up. Paul Phillips, Economics, Manitoba.
[PEN-L:10323] Re: planning and democracy
Max Sawicky wrote, there isn't much left of planning, properly speaking, much less socialism, without public ownership of capital and public control of its allocation. What's left is where most of us are, in some kind of social-democratic framework. In other words, I agree with those on the further left who say most of us on, say, PEN-L, aren't really socialists. I differ in that I think that's as it should be. Max is right (except for the last line). To add definition to Max's "public ownership of capital and public control of its allocation", I'd mention the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat". Today, the phrase is an embarrassment to many who would like to call and think of themselves as socialists. This is partly because the phrase has been appropriated and misused for expressly undemocratic purposes. But, rather than re-examine the concept itself, the "revisionists" (I can't resist the irony) suppose it's enough to substitute a more benign sounding "democratic planning" for the terrifying "dictatorship". The problem with such a smooth transition is that it begs the question of the need for any transition at all. If the cure for bourgeois democracy is simply "more democracy", then we might as well get on with the practical work on taxes and transfers rather than speculating about alternative systems. On the other hand, if the problem is the qualitative issue of class rule, then a mere quantitative increase in "democracy" is a non-sequitur -- again making speculation about alternative systems a waste of time. To return to the socialist embarrassment about the dictatorship of the proletariat, there is a second, "non-Stalinist" source for the chagrin: the dictatorship is transcendental, not scientific. Socialists (particularly of the academic marxist variety) would like to present themselves as reasonable people, whose actions and beliefs are grounded in empirical observation, etc. etc. But the dictatorship of the proletariat has more in common with the father, the son and the holy ghost then it does with the working class (or "the workers" or "working people"). Don't take my word for it, remember old Karl himself wrote a manifesto about a "spectre haunting Europe". Compare that to the advocates of planning who seek to evade the spectral character of the revolutionary subject by shifting to the passive tense. Meanwhile, unfettered by such subaltern scruples, the clumsily manipulated, "invisible" hand of the neo-liberals is left to rake in all the ideological chips. I wish I could wrap this thought up with some answers, but maybe it's not such a bad thing to generate a few questions instead. Why have we come to take "bourgeois ideology" at face value as, at least, an *attempt* at empirical description? How have we come to the imaginative impasse of seeking to oppose "their" empirical descriptions with our own, more faithful to the "facts"? What, then, is the status of an "empirical description" of something that doesn't yet exist? Have socialists forgotten how to dream in colour (or are they just ashamed to try)? As for Max's last line, "that's as it should be", I can't buy it. Here in Canada, the social-democratic NDP abstains from even its own social-democratic, electoral politics in a vain attempt to be seen as a voice of moderation. The NDP appeal in the current election comes down to nostalgia for the 1970s -- a presumably brighter, happier, more innocent time. If you liked the Partridge Family, you'll love the NDP. The PF was "wholesome" psychedelia without drugs. The NDP is wholesome Keynesianism without fiscal crises. And there's the social democratic dilemma in a nutshell: it's not simply that social-democratic policy prescriptions are objectionable, it's that in order to be palatable to the "mainstream" they always have to be repackaged as even more innocuous then they are. Social democratic policies can never be innocuous enough, at least until they are completely vapid -- at which point, they are readily dismissed by "the mainstream" as vapid. Regards, Tom Walker ^^ knoW Ware Communications | Vancouver, B.C., CANADA | "Only in mediocre art [and in spreadsheets] [EMAIL PROTECTED] |does life unfold as fate." (604) 669-3286| ^^ The TimeWork Web: http://mindlink.net/knowware/worksite.htm
[PEN-L:10321] Torturing Palestinians and the Daoud Kuttab case (fwd)
FYI Shawgi Tell University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 09:46:46 -0700 From: MER Editorial [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Torturing Palestinians and the Daoud Kuttab case M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S - Editorial *** TORTURING THE PALESTINIANS, AND THE CASE OF DAOUD KUTTAB *** To receive MER weekly send reply message with words "SEND MER" [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- MER EDITORIAL: OPPRESSING, SUBJUGATING, AND TORTURING THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE AND THE CASE OF DAOUD KUTTAB MER - Washington - 5/24/97. The Palestinians remain today the Blacks of the Middle East. They are oppressed, harrassed and discriminated against at every turn. And not only by the Israelis; but also by the Israeli-installed "Palestinian Authority" itself as well as by the associated Arab "client-regimes" that control the region holding nearly everyone in bondage. This said, Israeli torture and subjugation of the Palestinians, both collectively and individually, is particularly eggregious; especially as it is the United States and other Western powers that for decades have provided the money, guns, and political cover that make it all possible. Indeed, in the deceptive and duplicitous name of "peace process", a regime of Middle Eastern apartheid has descended upon the Palestinian people. Palestinians today are quite literally imprisoned in Gaza and "autonomous areas", subjected to pass laws reminiscent of the South Africa of old, and overall kept in a permanent state of submission and subjugation. What the Israelis call "law", when applied to Palestinians, is little but a subterfuge for dispossession, repression, and lawlessness of the most hypocritical kind. What the West calls "Palestinian Authority" and "Palestinian police" is little but a subterfuge for a mercenary force armed and paid to sub-oppress and control the natives. Recently the White House came to the defense of a Palestinian journalist, Daoud Kuttab. Kuttab was arrested by the "Palestinian Authority" after spreading the word about Arafat's still-growing censorship, now expanded (ironically with American and Israeli money and equipment) to jamming radio and TV programs -- as unbelievable as that must sound to many who support, nearly always without understanding, the so-called "peace process". Though Arafat's PA's abuses are indefensable and increasingly despicable, this is not the first nor the worst of them. The real and serious problems are not for Palestinians like Kuttab; persons well-known, with many influential friends, and in this particular case with an American passport. Kutab is not likely to be harmed; he will get out soon; he is well-funded with USAID and George Soros grants designed to further this wretched apartheid "peace process" which (also ironically) Kuttab supports (or he wouldn't be given the grants or offered the American assistance); and he will be more influential for having been arrested in this way. You can't pay for this kind of publicity! Meanwhile, the sheer stupidity of the Arafat regime seems to know no bounds, whether at the negotiating table or in the streets. But where is the White House when it comes to the torturing of Palestinians to death by its "strategy ally" Israel? And where are the Americans when Palestinian homes are blown up and "sealed" in collective punishment tactics clearly outlawed by international laws to which the U.S. is signatory? And where is the White House when non-American and unknown Palestinians are harassed, beaten, tortured, curfewed, and in general subjected to the most humiliating kinds of discrimination and abuse -- increasingly by the PA as well as directly by the Israelis -- and all with American money and guns! The recent murder by torture of Khalil Ali Abu Daiyya -- see the information that follows -- is not an isolated case. Israeli repression, beatings, closures, barricades, curfews, torture, and on and on, are actually daily occurrences and have been for decades. Worse yet, with the post-Gulf War "peace process" the situation for Palestinians has dramatically worsened on all fronts. So the White House wants Arafat to let Daoud Kuttab go. Yet the same White House closes its eyes and shuts its mouth while the Israelis go on, year after year, created hatreds that are sure to result in revenge in the bloody years now ahead; and when the PA of Yasser Arafat mimics the same tactics. MAB - PALESTINIAN DETAINEE TORTURED TO DEATH AUTOPSY REPORTS CONFIRM DEATH BY
[PEN-L:10322] Re: The EU: against wishful thinking
On Tue, May 20, 1997 at 08:12:20 (-0700) Doug Henwood writes: Well, I'm in the midst of trying to do just that. What do you, Maggie, or anyone else for that matter, think of this observation from Teresa Ebert's preface to Ludic Feminism: "This mode [of canonic feminist theory] has become a more and more restricted, ahistorical, and localist genre of descriptive and immanent writing. According to the codes of this mode of writing, feminist theory, first of all, has to be written in a 'feminine' language. In other words, it has to avoid abstract concepts (if it does deploy them, they must be quickly deconstructed into an indeterminate series of open-ended stories) and instead rely on anecdotes, memoirs, confessions, little narratives, and other forms of intimate self-writing. The debilitating assumption behind this injunction is that concepts are in and of themselves panhistorically masculinist. The unsaid of such an understanding is, of course, that women are essentially aconceptual. I write against this assumption." Maggie has responded to this, and I have nothing really to add, except to ask a question and offer a reference or two. First, isn't much of this dichotomization of men and women rooted (I confess to almost complete ignorance as to its true origins) in the writings of, say Carol Gilligan and "difference feminism"? Second, Katha Pollit wrote an excellent article entitled "Are Women Morally Superior to Men?" (with the smaller super-title of "Marooned on Gilligan's Island") in the December 28, 1992 issue of _The Nation_ (I have a copy of it, if anyone is interested in further info or a fax). I thought Doug and/or Maggie might find this quite stimulating. Pollit looks at the popular book by Deborah Tannen (_You Just Don't Understand_) which I have read and found to be stunningly shallow and strewn with seemingly willful misinterpretations of male/female speech samples. Lastly, Noam Chomsky wrote a rejoinder to notions of science vaguely similar to Gilligan's conceptions of sharp gender differences of (inter alia) cognitive faculties. This can be found at http://www.lbbs.org/zmag/articles/chompomoart.html and might also be of interest. Bill
[PEN-L:10320]
Please don't send me any more e-mail
[PEN-L:10319] US-New Zealand Free Trade agreement?
FYI: from the New Zealand Press Association (24/5/97) The United States has confirmed its interest in setting up a free trade agreement with New Zealand, Trade Minister Lockwood Smith said yesterday. Dr Smith met US trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky yesterday on the possibility of pursuing a free trade agreement similar in style to the Closer Economic Relations Agreement between New Zealand and Australia. Bill /-\ | Bill Rosenberg, Acting Director, Centre for Computing and Biometrics, | |P. O. Box 84, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand. | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone:(64)(03)3252-811 Fax:(64)(03)3253-865 | \-/
