re: "Classic" revolutions

[Doug Henwood]

Louis N Proyect wrote:

>This is the central feature of 20th century revolutions: They tend to
>occur in peasant nations and they are caused by the miseries of
>colonialism and neocolonialism. Once the comprador bourgeoisie is
>overthrown and the imperialist bourgeosie is beaten back, the Communist
>Party embarks on an development path that stresses industrialization as
>rapidly as possible. This has led some Sovietologists to conclude that the
>CP is a bourgeoisie.

Of course, we haven't had one of these revolutions since the Nicaraguan one
almost 20 years ago, and even that didn't follow this model. With
neoliberalism deepening many neo-neocolonial miseries, what happened to
revolution?

Doug

re: "Classic" revolutions

[Louis N Proyect]

On Thu, 9 Oct 1997, James Devine wrote:

> Now it's true that the USSR-type revolutions have helped _create_ a
> proletariat, by pushing industrialization. But that's something that
> capitalism does too.
> 

This is the central feature of 20th century revolutions: They tend to
occur in peasant nations and they are caused by the miseries of
colonialism and neocolonialism. Once the comprador bourgeoisie is
overthrown and the imperialist bourgeosie is beaten back, the Communist
Party embarks on an development path that stresses industrialization as
rapidly as possible. This has led some Sovietologists to conclude that the
CP is a bourgeoisie.

The problem is that the bourgeoisie generally lacks the political will to
move the development process forward. It capitulates under pressure from
imperialism. In the entire 20th century, there has been only nation in
Latin America that has successfully broken the cycle of underdevelopment
and that is Cuba. Castro's economic program in 1959 was not markedly
different from the statist development schemes of a thousand different
caudillos. Cuba moved forward because the capitalist class was liquidated
and a revolutionary party begand to sink roots in society. The July 26th
movement, as opposed to the Bolshevik Party, became less bureaucratic and
more revolutionary the longer it stayed in power.

The only course available for backward countries has been revolutions that
overthrow the capitalist class. The workers in these countries tend not to
be in the leadership because industry is underdeveloped. For example,
China had fewer than 3% of the nation employed as true workers in 1947.
And the overwhelming majority of these were employed in small shops in
light industry.

So it fell to the peasants and the Communist Party to overthrow
capitalism. And they did. 

If Jim doesn't want to award the Chinese Revolution the title of
"proletarian", that is his privilege. Meanwhile the capitalist class knew
full well that Mao's Red Armies were a threat to their class rule. The
march toward socialism does not take place in a straight line. It is
altogether likely that the peasant-led socialist revolutions can no longer
succeed. That is the opinion of people like Victor Tirado, the
disillusioned Sandinista leader.

At any rate, much of this sort of discussion tends to have a very abstract
quality. I have been through it three times on the Spoons List and have
just turned down an invitation from the leader of Communist Voice, an
insignificant sect, to debate it once again. I have reached the point
where I tend to accept the differences around these questions that all
good socialists will have. "State capitalism" is no litmus test for me. 

Louis Proyect

Re: Truth?

[Bill Burgess]

Ricardo D. wrote 
>
> My problem with this is that adding "sides" to an argument does not 
> constitute by itself a dialectical approach. Marxist have the wrong 
> habit of thinking that if they connects "x" to "y",  then they are 
> dialectical. Moreover, how many sides does one incorporate before 
> denconstructing the essential core of marxism? 
> 
One of the points I got out of Lebowitz's _Beyond Capital_ is the criteria
for evaluating the adequacy of a concept (I think this is related to "how
many sides..."). As I understand it, Marx, following Hegel, argued that
all suppositions should also be results (e.g. see in _Capital_ where he
explains in machinofacturer rather than manufacture is the characteristic
form of production under capitalism). I think this helps define the
(differing) relevence of various sides, which I take to be your concern
about the 'essential core of Marxism'. 

Also, I wouldn't want to try to represent _Beyond Capital_, but I think
it's point is not *adding* sides to _Capital_ but begining to
elaborate sides that were always there but that Marx could not complete.  

Bill Burgess 

re: "Classic" revolutions

[john gulick]

Louis sez:

>It is
>altogether likely that the peasant-led socialist revolutions can no longer
>succeed. That is the opinion of people like Victor Tirado, the
>disillusioned Sandinista leader.

I sez:

It seems that one reason why many ex-socialist revolutionaries in Central
and Latin America (and by ex-socialist revolutionaries I mean those who were
the genuine ticket, not ex-supporters of the national bourgeoisie like Cardoso
in Brazil) now embrace selective or full-scale privatization of the state
sector is because foreign investors promise to "modernize" the forces of
production (especially telecoms and transport, but also manufacturing) in a
way that didn't happen during 1) the bad old days when peripheral countries
were simply raw material exporters, or 2) recent times when the historical
weight
of underdevelopment, and imperialism, counterinsurgency, and internal
contradictions militated against the expansion of the productive forces.
>From their posts as heads of state ministries or leading figures in reformist
opposition parties, many ex-revolutionaries cautiously welcome foreign
investment, because, despite the increased layoffs, poverty, and inequality
privatization causes, it at the very least bears the stamp of "modernization,"
betraying a fascination with pumping up the forces of production that you
wouldn't expect from anyone who has passing familiarity with the distorting
effects of capital-intensive FDI in countries that already have high
percentages of informal urban workers.

My question is this: does the abandonment of the peasant-led socialist
revolution model not only have to do with the oft-cited reasons (the end of the
Cold War and Soviet aid, the failure of past experiments due to imperialist
aggression or counter-revolution from above, the decreasing demographic
weight of the peasantry, and so on), but with the following: To the extent
that the shards of social revolutionary movements that aim to take state
power remain enamoured with "development," ultra-modern infrastructure and
capital goods have become so costly and sophisticated that no movement that
hopes to attain them can do so without inviting in the TNC's, and/or
super-exploiting the ex-peasants as primary sector wage workers, both of which
obviously by definition fly in the face of peasant-led mobilization.

That's a long statement which is meant to be a question.

And with this, I better retire for a while, for I've been on pen-l more in
the last few days than the whole rest of the year !!!

 
John Gulick
Ph. D. Candidate
Sociology Graduate Program
University of California-Santa Cruz
(415) 643-8568
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Deleuze-Guattari

[john gulick]

At 07:14 PM 10/9/97 -0400, you wrote:
>John, this didn't get to the list. Why don't you post it there and I might
>reply.
>
>Lou
>
>
>On Thu, 9 Oct 1997, john gulick wrote:
>
>> You sez:
>> 
>> >Could you possibly be referring to Michael Mann?
>> 
>> 
>> I sez:
>> 
>> Most of what little I know about popular support for the Nazis in inter-war
>> Germany is based on churning through a couple of sources this summer --
>> Hobsbawm's Twentieth Century book, and F.L. Karsten's _The German Workers
>> and the Nazis_. Given that you also cite Hobsbawm, it may well be that you
>> have either done your homework better than I, or just recall him better
>> than I. Karsten seemed like a lefty, but of what exact stripe I do not know.
>> I do recollect that he was sifting through and interpreting the evidence
>> with a clear eye toward understanding the reactionary implications of
>> affirming the "working class authoritarian personality" thesis. 
>> 
>> 
>> You sez:
>> 
>> >If he is correct, then there is something basically wrong with the Marxist
>> >approach, isn't there? If the Nazis attracted the working-class, then
>> >wouldn't we have to reevaluate the revolutionary role of the
>> >working-class? Perhaps it would be necessary to find some other class to
>> >lead the struggle for socialism, if this struggle has any basis in reality
>> >to begin with.
>> 
>> To claim that the Nazis drawing some significant measure of working class
>> support poses a threat to the Marxist approach holds true if and only if
>> one subscribes to a stilted, deterministic variety of Marxism. One would have
>> to believe that there is a necessary relationship between social class
location
>> and collective understanding of interest, but certainly there are all sorts
>> of mediating influences that get in the way of this -- and why not ?!
Certainly
>> one shouldn't expect people's beliefs and actions to revolve merely around
>> their relation to the means of production. You yourself have argued for
>> a nuanced historical materialism. In my mind a nuanced historical
>> materialism of capitalism proposes that capital accumulation and crisis,
>> uneven development
>> spatially and temporally, the ever-changing social division of labor, and so
>> on, 
>> structure the limits and possibilities of collective and individual
>> identities but does not dictate them. 
>> 
>> Without meaning to sound trite, obviously the truth of the remark that the
>> working class must play the leading role in building socialism depends on
>> what one means by "socialism," and the time and context in which the struggle
>> is taking place. To the extent that any genuine revolution must be waged by
>> and on behalf of the direct laborers, then yes, the working class must play
>> a principal role, but I would also argue that capital exploits and degrades
>> not just labor but other "conditions of production," and the commodification
>> and despoliation of these "conditions of production" affects class fragments
>> other than the working class formally defined and compels them to define
>> themselves and organize along lines other than those related specifically
>> to wage labor. 
>>  
>> >More specifically, Mann acknowledges
>> >that "Most fascist workers...came not from the main manufacturing
>> >industries but from agriculture, the service and public sectors and from
>> >handicrafts and small workshops."
>> 
>> Yes, this pretty much accords with what I gathered from the Karsten book,
>> although I do believe he showed proof of significant Nazi support in a couple
>> of important mining/manufacturing sectors. Which is not to say that all
>> things considered the German working class formally defined did not
>> constitute the (unsuccessful) main target of and main line of defense
>> against rising fascism, only that stentorian proclamations about
>> good working class/bad petty bourgeois/bad big bourgeois are a bit
>> simplistic.
>> 
>> And while I find your sectoral/class analysis informative and compelling,
>> it seems to me that while these political economic circumstances strongly
>> condition how it is that classes/class fragments conceive their material
>> interest, one can't presume from the start that defending/enhancing one's
>> livelihood is the only basis on which a political actor forges his/her
>> concept of material interest, or that the notion of material interest is
>> even meaningful to certain political actors.
>> 
>> Anyway, I babble on.
>> 
>> John Gulick
>> Ph. D. Candidate
>> Sociology Graduate Program
>> University of California-Santa Cruz
>> (415) 643-8568
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> 
>> 
>> 
>
>
>
>
John Gulick
Ph. D. Candidate
Sociology Graduate Program
University of California-Santa Cruz
(415) 643-8568
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

"Classic" revolutions

[Louis Proyect]

Jim Devine:
 
>
>State-owned property does not make a society proletarian. After all, the
>Pharoah owned the means of production in ancient Egypt. He was hardly
>proletarian. 
>
>"Expropriation of the bourgeoisie" is necessary but not sufficient to make
>a revolution "proletarian," since the state bureaucrats can end up holding
>all the cards. 
>
>Anyway, in what sense was the NKorean revolution "proletarian"?
>

No revolution is really of the "classic" kind, including the bourgeois
revolution. For all of the use that Marx and Engels made of the French
Revolution of 1789 as a "classic" one, the bourgeoisie did not really lead
the revolution, but elements of the aristocracy. So argues George Comnimel,
a Canadian Marxist of some repute.

North Korea was a proletarian revolution in the same sense that the
Vietnamese or the Chinese revolution were. They were anti-capitalist, just
as the French revolution was anti-feudal despite being led by social layers
not identical with the rising bourgeoisie.

Louis Proyect

Re:Weber

[Ricardo Duchesne]

> Date sent:  Wed, 08 Oct 1997 12:11:14 -0400
> Send reply to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From:   Wojtek Sokolowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:Re: Deleuze-Guattari



 Louis Proyect wrote:

> >Mann is a "neo-Weberian" supposedly who also finds Marx useful. Max Weber
> >tried to explain the growth of capitalism as a consequence of the
> >"Protestant ethic".  

Sokolowski added:

> Another minor comment: I do not think it is an accurate reflection of
> Weber's argument; he argued for the existence of 'elective affinity' between
> protestant ethic and the interest of the mercantile class; in other words:
> protestantism gained popularity because it was appealing to the class
> gaining substantial economic power, and then it was used as the means to
> legitimate the interests of that class.  
> 
> This is an essentially materialist argument that breaks with a rather
> mechanistic interpretation  
> 

First, for Weber the protestant ethic played only a partial 
role in the rise of capitalism; in fact, this ethic is just one more 
instance of the development of "occidental rationalization". Weber 
examines the rise of capitalism in terms of the progressive 
institutionalization of higher levels of 
instrumental rationality.  Thus, the development of calculable law, 
rationalized markets (of which free labor is an extension), a 
bureaucratic state, and so on, play as important a role as the 
protestant ethic. Secondly, as far as the explanation of long-term 
historical transformations are concerned, it is the neo-Weberians, 
not the Marxists, who have the upper hand right now. Think of Mann, 
Runciman, Tilly, Skocpol. Silly arguments agaisnt idealism do not 
resolve these difficulties. ricardo  
  what lies at the heart of his theory.is  capitalistic behavior 

Re: old USSR

[James Devine]

I agree with what Harry said to John Gulick about the labor-power market in
the old USSR: it existed. Of course, the labor market was different in the
USSR. See below.

I see the non-existence of commodity production (and its replacement by
production for the plan) and the state monopoly of the ownership of the
means of production as making the old USSR non-capitalist. In fact, in
class I draw one of those damn 2 x 2 boxes, with commodity production and
capital ownership along one yes/no dimension and wage-labor along the
other. Both capitalism and bureaucratic socialism have wage labor, but
differ along the commodity producing/private ownership of capital goods
dimension. Systems without wage-labor include US antebellum slavery and
independent commodity production (which both involve commodity production
and private ownership of the means of production) and pure feudalism (which
does not). 

Harry writes: >The J-F Tendency, and N&L as far as I have seen, made quite
an extensive point of shifting the discussion about capitalism and
socialism away from the issue of ownership which preoccupied Trotsky and
many others. They focused on, examined and redefined capitalism in terms of
the relations of production which is what they felt Marx did. The issue for
them was not who owned what but what people did with the power that they
had to control the means of production. And what their examination of
Stalinist USSR revealed to them was that the Soviet govt was basically
doing the same thing Western capitalists were doing, namely extracting as
large a surplus value as possible (which the workers and peasants resisted
and fought back against) and plowing it into an expansion of the the means
of production which was used in turn to extract ever more work, all while
minimizing, as it were, the diversion of production into meeting the needs
of the workers.<

My sketch of the USSR did not simply stop with a discussion of ownership.
After all, the CP didn't _officially_ or _legally_ own the state in the old
USSR. When we're talking about ownership that isn't official or juridical,
we're talking about social relations. 

Despite the similarities between the USSR and capitalism (which might push
one to think of the USSR as "one big corporation"), there were also many
differences. The USSR definitely attempted to imitate capitalism in terms
of authoritarianism in production and accumulation. 

But the absense of a significant reserve army of the unemployed (a key
difference from capitalism) meant that even though there was wage labor,
the authoritarianism in production wasn't very effective after awhile.
Workers "pretended to work" (often spending time waiting in line to buy
necessities instead of doing their jobs) at the same time the managers
"pretended to pay them" (because the money wouldn't buy much, given
shortages of goods). The quality of the product suffered greatly and this
became crucial when products became complex.

The central plan worked at promoting accumulation for awhile, in a manic
imitation of capitalism more than a literal translation. But the failure to
solve the problem of production and the evaporation of labor reserves
eventually caused the plan to grind to a halt. 

Harry also said the following, about which I have no comment:
>This said, another thing should be emphasized. For them "state capitalism"
refered not just to a system of ownership (a secondary issue as I said) or
even to a definition one might apply to the situation in any give country,
but to a whole state of capitalist development. In this they were a little
like Horkheimer who wrote an essay on "state capitalism" using a different
analysis but thinking at the same level. So for them "state capitalism" was
used somewhat like the term "Fordism" has been used in recent years to
characterize a whole epoch and englobed both what was commonly called
capitalism and what was commonly called socialism. Later on they extended
the analysis from the USSR to China and other "socialist" countries coming
to roughly the same conclusions based on the same reasoning. So I think you
could say that they called "state capitalism" "STATE capitalism" not
because the state owned the capital but because of the central role of the
state in both Soviet style socialism and Western style Keynesianism.<


Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"A society is rich when material goods, including capital, are cheap, and
human beings dear."  -- R.H. Tawney.

re: "Classic" revolutions

[James Devine]

I asked:>> in what sense was the NKorean revolution "proletarian"?<<

Louis answers: >North Korea was a proletarian revolution in the same sense
that the Vietnamese or the Chinese revolution were.<

That doesn't help, since those revolutions can be analyzed in exactly the
same way as I did the Kim il Sung revolution.

>They were anti-capitalist, just as the French revolution was anti-feudal
despite being led by social layers not identical with the rising bourgeoisie.<

Sure, they were anti-capitalist. But unless one believes in a unilinear
theory of history, accepting on faith Marx's unsupported assertion that
capitalism is last antagonist (class-ridden) mode of production, it does
not follow that anti-capitalism is moving in a proletarian direction.

The French revolution may be seen as "bourgeois" even though it wasn't led
by the bourgeoisie because in the end, it empowered the bourgeoisie (making
it "objectively bourgeois"). In what sense did the NKorean, Vietnamese, or
Chinese revolutions empower the proletariat?

Now it's true that the USSR-type revolutions have helped _create_ a
proletariat, by pushing industrialization. But that's something that
capitalism does too.



   
in pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
"It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.

Re: histomat

[James Devine]

Harry's comment was bounced by the pen-l server, but I think you can get
what he said from below. 

Harry writes": > Can you be more specific about the "non-determinist
interpretations" [of historical materialism or "HM"] you refer to above? ...<

As you might guess, I'd cite Mike Lebowitz's work as an example. There's
also a lot of  work that uses concepts like forces & relations of
production and even base & superstructure in an informal way, while using
Thompson-type "bottom-up" social history. I wrote a paper awhile back
trying to make theoretical sense out of all this, but alas it's on the back
burner. 

>... I think the point about "a set of questions" vs a "set of answers" is
an interesting one. From what I've seen in even the most rigid, e.g.,
Stalinist, versions of histomat, the problem WAS the "set of questions". As
in any other theory, the "set of questions" is inseperable from the rest of
theory. Why ask these questions rather than those questions? Theory guides.
My objection to retro-application of Marxist concepts to pre-capitalist
societies can be forumalated in these terms: you wind up asking the wrong
questions and being blind to other possiblities. <

Rather than trying to defend the distinction between questions & answers,
it's probably better to restate it. The point is to avoid dogmatism. Marx
did this, as when his studies of Russia suggested that the unilineal model
of historical development that he sketched in 1859 was wrong. 

You are absolutely right that it's wrong to take concepts specific to
capitalism (like the normality of growth of the forces of production) and
apply them unthinkingly to pre-capitalist societies.

>... the very concept of "production" in the abstract, like "labor" in the
abstract, emerged within the context of capitalism as a notion capable of
grasping the commonality of a diverse array of human activities reorganized
to generate commodities, profits, and social control<

I agree with all of what you way here, including the elided part. It seems
to me that applying the concept of "labor" to pre-capitalist systems isn't
wrong as much as the assumption that "labor" and "leisure" are everywhere
and always completely separate, dichotomous. That assumption reflects
experience living under capitalism but doesn't apply in a lot of other
contexts. This is the kind of thing that Marx wrote about in the 1844
MANUSCRIPTS. 

My original point was that how critical one is of "historical materialism"
depends on one's definition of that phrase. I would include all or almost
all of Marx's writings as being in part of HM. 

But I see no point in wasting time on definitions.
 

Han Young (fwd)

[valis]

=> This relates to that unionization vote held at the Hyundai
   maquiladora in Tijuana on Monday.
  valis


The elections board is scheduled to reconvene Thursday, Oct. 9. There is no
way of knowing when or if they will announce the election results. Stay
tuned for more news of Han Young.

Trim Bissell, Coordinator
Campaign for Labor Rights
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
(541) 344-5410

Re:

[Doug Henwood]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>The problem in making any kind of comparison at all in this context is that
>is altogether impossible to isolate the countries in question from the Cold
>War and its impact on economic development. For example, on the face of it
>West Germany "proves" that capitalism is superior to socialism, given the
>example of East Germany. At least that was what I was taught in high
>school. What I wasn't taught is that Stalin stuck to the letter of the law
>and prohibited re-industrialization of the East under terms of the treaty
>ending WWII. Furthermore, East Germany was primarily agricultural. Also,
>there was nothing quite like the Marshall Plan for East Germany and other
>European East Bloc nations. The Soviet Union had lost all of its industrial
>infrastructure in the Western 1/3 of the country and the death of millions
>of its citizens.

Well of course Lou; I was disagreeing with your characterization of China's
growth record as "spectacular." I'm certainly not trying to argue for the
superiority of capitalism. Again using Maddison's numbers, you can a lot
more fairly apply that word to the Soviet growth record - 5.6% a year from
1929-40, and 3.9% from 1948-70. I wasn't taught that in high school, and
I'm guessing you weren't either.

Doug

Re: Truth?

[Ricardo Duchesne]

> Date sent:  Wed, 8 Oct 1997 13:57:56 -0700 (PDT)
> Send reply to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From:   Bill Burgess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Copies to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
Bill Burguess writes:

 
> An example of how attention to Hegel helps is Mike Lebowitz's
> _Beyond Capital_, which is a very convincing and important
> demonstration of how many understandings of Marx's project are so
> one-sided, and the need to develop the 'political economy of workers'
> that Marx had projected as part of _Capital_ but was not able to get to.
> Lebowitz also refers to 1914 Lenin, and the latter's aphorism to the
> effect that as a result of not reading Hegel's _Science of Logic_
> 'Marxism' had not understood Marx for the previous 50 years. James
> Devine has frequently recommended this book on Pen-L and it really is
> unfortunate how little attention it has received.
> 
   
My problem with this is that adding "sides" to an argument does not 
constitute by itself a dialectical approach. Marxist have the wrong 
habit of thinking that if they connects "x" to "y",  then they are 
dialectical. Moreover, how many sides does one incorporate before 
denconstructing the essential core of marxism? 

ricardo

Re: Lenin, Hegel

[Ricardo Duchesne]

> Date sent:  Wed, 08 Oct 1997 08:40:46 -0400
> Send reply to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From:   Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Paul Zarembka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:Lenin, Hegel

Louis writes:
 
> The importance of Lenin's study of Hegel should be obvious given this
> context. When Lenin battled Bogdanov's empiro-criticism in 1908, he invoked
> a version of Marxist philosophy that was rather schematic, to be generous
> about it. The polemics are a rather stultifying version of dialectical
> materialism that fits right in with official Stalinist philosophy and
> politics.
> 
> When WWI began, Lenin was shocked to see the Socialist parliamentarians
> vote for war credits. He wanted to understand why Karl Kautsky, the most
> respected thinker of Social Democracy, would jump on the chauvinist
> bandwagon. Thus he devoted himself to a study of Hegel. His notebooks on
> Hegel run into hundreds of pages and they are the subject of Anderson's book.
> 
> I myself am a little skeptical about the need to study Hegel. I took a
> seminar on Hegel in graduate school in 1967 and read "Phenomenology of
> Spirit." Not a bad book, but a bit long-winded.
> 
> When I read Marx a few months later as part of my indoctrination into
> American Trotskyism, I found that there was just enough Hegel there to give
> the whole thing the power that it needed to understand change and process.
> Hegel without tears, so to speak. So I have never really understood the
> Hegel fetish of CLR James, Raya Duneskaya and their disciples.
> 


I think you are quite right about Lenin's 1908 book, yet your 
dismissive remarks about Hegel are have the same tone as Lenin's own 
closed-minded approach to the then current criticisms of 
materialism. It is worth 
remembering too that Lenin never abandoned his materialism however 
much dialectics he may have added to it.  ricardo







  
 
> At 10:25 PM 10/7/97 EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >Addressed to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >** Reply to note from [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue, 7 Oct 1997 14:38:38 -0700
> (PDT)
> >>   
> >> I just happened to skim through Kevin Anderson's _Lenin, Hegel, and
> >> Western Marxism (U of Ill. Press, 1995) who argues Lenin's position in 
> >> his 1908 Empirocriticism shifted by 1914 when he re-read Hegel to try to
> >> come to grips with Social Democracy's support for war. Thus the 
> >> Philosphical Notebooks are Lenin's more mature view on such questions,
> >> and Andersons also tries to illustrate this in later debates like over
> >> trade unions. Anderson suggests Stalinism has upheld Lenin in 1908 
> >> and suppressed his later and more nuanced, dialectical approach. Engels
> >> also gets a few boots. 
> >
> >Bill, I haven't seen the Anderson work (have others?), but it sounds
> >curious.  Why would Stalinism promote 1908 Lenin except as part of the
> >Lenin cult it wanted? just as it used Marx when useful.  Paul   
> > 
> >
> >*
> >Paul Zarembka, supporting the  RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY  Web site at
> >http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka   and using OS/2 Warp.
> >*
> >
> >
> 
> 

Coping with a Long Class

[Steven S. Zahniser]

Dear PEN-Lers:

I would like to thank Maggie Coleman, Geoff Schneider, Larry Shute, and
Ellen Starbird for their thoughtful suggestions about how to cope with a
long class session.  Below is a distillation of their ideas, as well as a
summary of what I actually did.

Maggie suggested that I divide the students into groups of three to four
persons and give each group a question to answer.  After 10 to 15 minutes
of careful reflection, a democratically elected representative of the
group would present the answer to the class.

Larry had a similar suggestion and emphasized that the lecturing should be
done in the mornings and the alternative activities should be done in the
afternoons, presumably because it is easier to fall asleep right after
lunch! 

Geoff advised combining a budget-balancing game with a "healthy" 
discussion of public investment, inequality, and the wisdom of balancing
the budget.  The game that he suggested is "Budget Blaster" (US NEWS AND
WORLD REPORT, February 20, 1995, pp. 33 ff.).  For the healthy discussion,
he recommended the following readings: 

John Cassidy, "Who Killed the Middle Class?", THE NEW YORKER,
10-16-1995; 

Robert Eisner, "Balancing Our Deficit Thinking," AMERICAN
PROSPECT; and

Robert Heilbroner, "Why Fear Debt?", NEW YORK TIMES, 2-28-1995.

Ellen and Geoff each recommended several videos:

"Battle of the Titans," on globalization and workers throughout
the world; 

"Controlling Interest," (circa early 1970s), about Pinochet's coup
in Chile and the export of jobs to Chile; 

"Earth and the American Dream," on growth and sustainable
development; 

"Who's Counting:  Sex, Lies, and Economics," about how women's
work is omitted from national income accounting; and

a three-part series on blue-collar workers in Milwaukee ("The
Minimum Wage Economy," "Living on the Edge", and "Does American
Still Work?").

In my class last Saturday, I lectured in the morning and played the budget
balancing game in the afternoon, followed by a little more lecture on the
national debt.  To add an additional twist to the budget game, I assigned
political "personalities" to several of the groups:

(1) Deirdre "the Deficit Cutter" Dandridge -- a socially moderate
yet fiscally conservative Republican House member from Ohio who
wanted to generate a $50 billion surplus;

(2) "Swingin'" Stewart Anderson -- a newly elected old-school
Democrat from Minnesota who sought to bolster spending on job
training programs and to defend vigorously any attacks on social
spending; and

(3) Colon Howell, III -- a Republicrat (or was it Democan?) 
representing Virginia in the U.S. Senate, a former military
officer concerned about America's military preparedness.

Several groups were just voices from California ("Sal from Cal" and "Cal
from Sal").  These groups adopted their own personalities.

Students seemed to enjoy the game (one even remarked how quickly the class
time passed!) and had a lot of creative fiscal approaches.  Space
exploration often was one of the first discretionary spending items to go,
followed by defense spending, and the groups generally had no reluctance
about raising taxes.  One clever group raised additional revenues by
legalizing and then taxing drugs! 

I allowed students to form their own groups.  This worked out for all but
one group which included two students (both foreigners) who had little
interest in U.S. budgetary politics.  If I do this activity again, I will 
probably select the groups myself.

Thanks again to Maggie, Geoff, Larry, and Ellen!

Steven Zahniser
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

No Subject

[Louis Proyect]

Doug Henwood:

>
>Of course South Korean growth wouldn't have been possible without support
>from the U.S., and even before the Vietnam war - Korean firms learned how
>to do large construction projects in part by building bases for the U.S.
>military in Korea itself. I share your admiration of Cuba, Lou, but it's
>very hard to hold up North Korea as much of a model for development; yes it
>did grow for a while, but not all that spectacularly.
>

The problem in making any kind of comparison at all in this context is that
is altogether impossible to isolate the countries in question from the Cold
War and its impact on economic development. For example, on the face of it
West Germany "proves" that capitalism is superior to socialism, given the
example of East Germany. At least that was what I was taught in high
school. What I wasn't taught is that Stalin stuck to the letter of the law
and prohibited re-industrialization of the East under terms of the treaty
ending WWII. Furthermore, East Germany was primarily agricultural. Also,
there was nothing quite like the Marshall Plan for East Germany and other
European East Bloc nations. The Soviet Union had lost all of its industrial
infrastructure in the Western 1/3 of the country and the death of millions
of its citizens.

This is the same sort of discussion we were having a while back on judging
the success of the East Asian tigers. There are all sorts of mitigating
circumstances that have to be taken into account when judging Singapore,
for example. Jim Devine pointed out that a lot of Singapore's success is
related to the exploitation of Malaysia.

One of the unique features of an economic system such as the kind that
prevailed in East Germany is that it not plunder or pillage other
countries. Instead it donated trucks, printing presses, medicine,
fertilizer, etc. to Cuba and the African National Congress in exile.
Meanwhile, West German banks were bleeding Yugoslavia dry during the 70s.

Louis Proyect

Today's Wall Street Journal on Mankiw's new book

[William S. Lear]

In a revolting editorial disguised as a book review, the Wall Street
Journal today published, on p. A18, the thoughts of Mark Skousen, who
celebrates Mankiw's new textbook as a "counterrevolutionary" work which
"defeats" Keynesianism and puts "classical economics back at the
forefront, where it belongs".  Mankiw, apparently undeterred by the
1980s, "approvingly quotes Milton Friedman" that "inflation is always
and everywhere a monetary phenomenon".  One other gem discerned by
Skousen in Mankiw's new book is that "Unemployment is caused not by
greedy industrialists, but by minimum wage laws, collective
bargaining, unemployment insurance and other regulations that raise
the cost of labor."

Ah the joys of the ruling class---slap some propaganda between two
covers, throw in some math and graphs, sell it as a textbook for
millions (dollars and students), and get celebrated by the largest
circulating newspaper in America.


Bill

Re: "State Capitalism"

[Doug Henwood]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>Woudld the South Korean boom have been possible without mammoth support
>from the US, especially during the Vietnam war? The problem with gauging
>economic success is that there is no such thing as capitalism in one
>country. Yugoslavia was a success in the 1950s and early 60s for reasons
>that had little to do with its "market socialism" experiment.
>I suspect that North Korea's current economic woes can not be disassociated
>from the collapse of the Soviet trading bloc. North Korea's economic model
>was based on People's China and there was, after all, spectacular growth in
>China since WWII. All you will get from Tell is stupid Stalinist
>propaganda, but there is more to the North Korea than meets the eye in the
>NY Times. As far as bizarre personality cults are concerned, you should not
>forget that Reverend Moon is one of the most powerful political and
>industrial leaders in South Korea.

Of course South Korean growth wouldn't have been possible without support
from the U.S., and even before the Vietnam war - Korean firms learned how
to do large construction projects in part by building bases for the U.S.
military in Korea itself. I share your admiration of Cuba, Lou, but it's
very hard to hold up North Korea as much of a model for development; yes it
did grow for a while, but not all that spectacularly.

China's economic record under Mao is pretty mixed. Maddison's figures, if
they can be trusted, show a PPP-adjusted per capita GDP of $614 in 1950
rising to $962 in 1958, falling back to $718 in 1962 (below 1952's level),
rising to $1,025 in 1966, falling with cultural revolution, then rising
again in the 1970s, to $1,205 in 1976, the year of Mao's death. So from
1950 to 1976, Chinese per capita incomes rose an average of 2.6% a year,
which is good, but not "spectacular." I don't mean to deny the tremendous
social gains of Maoist China, of course; man (and woman) doesn't live by
yuan alone.

I don't see how Rev Moon's status excuses hero worship in the North.

Doug

Mankiw's text

[Steven S. Zahniser]

What does Mankiw's text actually say?  I was under the impression that
Mankiw was somewhat ecclectic in his macro-thinking.  Has anyone taken a
look at it or even used it in a class?

Steven Zahniser
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

N vs. S. Korea

[James Devine]

Louis writes >Woudld the South Korean boom have been possible without
mammoth support from the US...? The problem with gauging economic success
is that there is no such thing as capitalism in one country. Yugoslavia was
a success in the 1950s and early 60s for reasons that had little to do with
its "market socialism" experiment. I suspect that North Korea's current
economic woes can not be disassociated from the collapse of the Soviet
trading bloc. North Korea's economic model was based on People's China 
there is more to the North Korea than meets the eye in the NY Times. As far
as bizarre personality cults are concerned, you should not forget that
Reverend Moon is one of the most powerful political and industrial leaders
in South Korea.<

If we take your point as accurate (and it may be so), what this says is
that S. and N. Korea are _similar_. But Louis, you were saying that these
two were _different_. In an earlier missive you said:

>This type of analysis [that of Raya Dunayaskaya's NEWS AND LETTERS group]
can not distinguish between North Korea and South Korea. Both have
extensive state-owned industry and employ various forms of planning. The
difference is that the North had a proletarian revolution and expropriated
the bourgeoisie, while the South did not.<

But now you are saying that they are very similar.

In looking for a difference between the two Koreas, I would pick up on one
word in the second quote: proletarian. 

In what sense was the N. Korean revolution "proletarian"? Sure Kim il Sung
_said_ that his revolution was "for the proletariat" or "in the name of the
proletariat." But is there any reason why we should believe him? One of the
principles of historical materialism that Karlos & Freddy enunciated in THE
GERMAN IDEOLOGY is that we shouldn't trust anyone's self-perception and
-description. 

I have no doubt that a large number of proletarians -- and more importantly
for a largely agrarian country back in the late 1940s and 1950s, peasants
-- _supported_ the Kim il Sung revolution. It was a revolution against
foreign occupation, against the landlords, etc. that promised a lot of
social benefits to the people.  

But I wouldn't call it a "proletarian revolution" unless the proletarians
actually ran the state. And that involves democracy, something that N.
Korean doesn't have. They don't even have the attenuated democracy that S.
Korea has. And for the proletariat to rule, it needs _more_ (not less)
democracy than bourgeois democracy offers. 

Maybe Kim il Sung himself started out as a proletarian, along with a lot of
the other CP bureaucrats. But persistent control of the state -- especially
an authoritarian state like that of NK -- creates a social gap between
proletarians and bureaucrats. 

State-owned property does not make a society proletarian. After all, the
Pharoah owned the means of production in ancient Egypt. He was hardly
proletarian. 

"Expropriation of the bourgeoisie" is necessary but not sufficient to make
a revolution "proletarian," since the state bureaucrats can end up holding
all the cards. 

Anyway, in what sense was the NKorean revolution "proletarian"?





in pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
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.

Re: "State Capitalism"

[Louis Proyect]

Doug Henwood:
>
>Yes, and South Korea generated one of the great booms in economic history,
>while North Korea is suffering from famine and under the influence of a
>truly bizarre personality cult. Now I know that the NY Times is often full
>of lies, and no doubt Shawgi Tell will set us straight on this one, but
>this item (from a story about the hereditary ascension of Kim Jong Il to
>leadership) brightened my morning today:
>

Woudld the South Korean boom have been possible without mammoth support
from the US, especially during the Vietnam war? The problem with gauging
economic success is that there is no such thing as capitalism in one
country. Yugoslavia was a success in the 1950s and early 60s for reasons
that had little to do with its "market socialism" experiment.
I suspect that North Korea's current economic woes can not be disassociated
from the collapse of the Soviet trading bloc. North Korea's economic model
was based on People's China and there was, after all, spectacular growth in
China since WWII. All you will get from Tell is stupid Stalinist
propaganda, but there is more to the North Korea than meets the eye in the
NY Times. As far as bizarre personality cults are concerned, you should not
forget that Reverend Moon is one of the most powerful political and
industrial leaders in South Korea.

Louis Proyect

RE: kathrine abraham

[Richardson_D]

She was renominated.  It was just that the nomination was late, toward
the end of August.  No reason that I know of was ever given for the
delay.  Nor is it clear that there is any real opposition -- the Repubs
haven't been focusing on this either.  In a way it IS very mysterious.
I just do not know.

Dave

--
Sent:   Thursday, October 09, 1997 11:22 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:kathrine abraham

Why did Clinton not renominate K.A.?  Was it because she had more of a
spine about the CPI than he did?
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: "State Capitalism"

[Doug Henwood]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>Yes, this is the analysis and it is faulty. This type of analysis can not
>distinguish between North Korea and South Korea. Both have extensive
>state-owned industry and employ various forms of planning. The difference
>is that the North had a proletarian revolution and expropriated the
>bourgeoisie, while the South did not.

Yes, and South Korea generated one of the great booms in economic history,
while North Korea is suffering from famine and under the influence of a
truly bizarre personality cult. Now I know that the NY Times is often full
of lies, and no doubt Shawgi Tell will set us straight on this one, but
this item (from a story about the hereditary ascension of Kim Jong Il to
leadership) brightened my morning today:


>Likewise, the Korean press has lately described phenomena
>like trees blossoming out of season, which to Westerners may
>seem an odd thing to make a fuss over but is understandable to
>Korean traditionalists as a sign that the Mandate of Heaven is
>passing.
>
>"On the morning of Sept. 22, fishermen of the fishery station
>in Rajin-Sonbong City caught a 10-centimeter long white sea
>cucumber while fishing on the waters off Chongjin," the
>official New Korea News Agency reported. "They said the
>rare white sea cucumber has come to hail the auspicious event
>of electing comrade Kim Jong Il as party general secretary."
>
>"Seeing the mysterious natural phenomena," the agency
>continued, "Koreans say comrade Kim Jong Il is indeed the
>greatest of great men produced by Heaven and that flowers
>come into bloom to mark the great event."



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: 

Teachers And Students Escalate Actions To Defend Public Education (Canada)

[Shawgi A. Tell]

On Monday, October 6, Metro-Toronto affiliates of the five teachers
associations in Ontario staged a massive rally at Maple Leaf Gardens to
protest Bill 160, the Education Quality Improvement Act. By the time the
rally started at 7pm, the arena, which seats 18,000 people, was packed to
overflow. Teachers in the Peel region (west of Toronto) held a rally at the
same time at the International Centre in Mississauga. They marched to
Queen's Park following the rallies. On October 8, teachers in the
Hamilton-Wentworth and Halton regions are staging another rally at Copps
Coliseum in Hamilton.
 These rallies are being held under the slogan "We Won t Back Down!."
Teachers  representatives are to meet today at Queen's Park with Ontario
Education Minister John Snobelen to discuss the Bill. The teachers are
continuing to threaten strike action should the government refuse to either
withdraw the bill in its entirety or remove the objectionable provisions.
 Bill 160 will greatly concentrate control over education in the hands
of the provincial cabinet, while stripping the school boards of almost all
power to control what goes on in the schools. Since teachers negotiate with
the school boards, not the provincial cabinet, the teachers will
effectively lose the ability to exercise any control over their working
conditions.  Bill 160 will extend the time of the school year, give cabinet
the power to set class sizes, and give the cabinet the power to set
education taxation levels. It would also introduce the use of non-certified
instructors in the schools and reduce teacher preparation time. 
   Ontario's 126,000 teachers and education workers are organized into
five association: the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation
(OSSTF), the Federation of Women Teachers  Associations of Ontario
(FWTAO), the Ontario Public School Teachers Federation (OPSTF), the
Association of Franco-Ontarion Teachers (AEFO), and the Ontario English
Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA).  

TML DAILY, 10/97



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

Re: Deleuze-Guattari

[valis]

> >Tomatoes and tomahtoes are the same no? Domination is the
> >constraint on desire. Capital (dead labor) is a constraint on the working
> >class (living labor +). The argument is that you can't really even
> >understand domination/constraint unless you understand the autonomous
> >force (living labor, working class subjectivity, being for-itself) that is
> >being constrained. Most Marxism has focused on the constraint, failed to
> >focus on the force being constrained and wound up offering deficient
> >explanations of domination.
> 
> I have no idea what you are talking about. This is a bunch of graceless
> jargon.

YAYYY!!  I suspect that Louis has a fair idea of what's being said there,
but understands better that nobody truly desiring revolution should ever
express himself in language so absurdly beyond the average worker's grasp.
Not if that's to be the revolution's main actor and beneficiary.

There s/he is: bone-tired, under-educated, overworked, paranoid, harried 
at home, systematically disinformed, feeling squeezed out, filled with
positively volcanic resentments and already helped along by a few glasses 
of the traditional worker's sacrament.  This ain't Rethinking Marxism. 
Good luck!

 valis

"State Capitalism"

[Louis Proyect]

Harry Cleaver:

>Raya's
>analysis of the Soviet 5-year plans concluded that they were very much
>geared to as rapid accumulation as possible at the expense of workers and
>peasants, thus effectively "for profit" --understood as surplus labor and
>surplus value-- while minimizing the meeting of worker and peasant "needs"
>as much as possible. THAT was the analysis, in a nutshell.

Yes, this is the analysis and it is faulty. This type of analysis can not
distinguish between North Korea and South Korea. Both have extensive
state-owned industry and employ various forms of planning. The difference
is that the North had a proletarian revolution and expropriated the
bourgeoisie, while the South did not.

Any society, especially those in the throes of underdevelopment, have to
generate capital internally. Preobrezhensky and Trotsky argued for the
primitive accumlation of capital in the early years of the USSR. Their
arguments were beyond reproach. When Stalin turned against the Kulaks and
embarked on rapid industrialization, many people assumed that he had
implemented the left opposition's program. Nothing could have been further
from the truth. The "needs" that were being attended to were those of the
bureaucracy, not the worker and the peasant. This, however, does not mean
that the USSR had become capitalist in this period. It simply means that
the bureaucracy was taking a bigger piece of the pie than it deserved.
Resentment over the greed of the bureaucracy would generate protest. Hence
the police state.

A similar pattern existed in the Teamsters Union under Jimmy Hoffa. The
teamster bureaucracy enjoyed a bourgeois life-style while ripping off the
ranks. Any teamster who complained got his or her teeth kicked in. This
does not mean that the Teamsters Union was not a union, just one that
needed reform.

Louis Proyect

Deleuze-Guattari

[Louis Proyect]

Harry Cleaver:

> Although I might not put it in the same words, I don't object to
>this kind of description, except that it leaves too much out and, in
>particular, the analysis of some of the behaviors refered to. For example,
>it seems to me that if the "message has an enormous appeal", then it must
>be explained why it does, as opposed to other messages. Obviously, when we
>oppose fascist arguments in such historical contexts as you describe
>we do so because we think it is possible that other arguments might
>counter, or outweigh, or be more attractive to people.
>

Germany entered a pre-revolutionary situation after WWI. The working-class
was radicalized. So was the middle-class. Most of the class antagonism of
both classes was directed against big business. The working-class hated the
bourgeoisie because it did not pay a living wage. The middle class
shopkeeper hated the big retail chains because it was squeezing him out.
So, there was a general anti-capitalist sentiment. Nazism exploited the
anti-capitalist mood of the shopkeeper. So, from the middle class down,
there was desire for revolutionary change. The message of the social
democracy was business as usual. Vote for us and we will make things better
within the framework of bourgeois democracy in the Weimar Republic. The
message of the Communists was that the social democrats were "social
fascists" and just as bad as the Nazis. This disoriented the working class
base of the left parties. Meanwhile, the Nazis acted in a consistent and
single-minded manner to seize power, while being funded by big business
behind the scenes. The audacity of the Nazis, their populist rhetoric and
their violence helped to carve out a large political space, while the
timidity of the social democrats and the insanity of the Stalinists helped
to shrink their appeal. This is how Hitler came to power. This pattern was
repeated through much of Europe during this period. There were fascist
movements everywhere. The reason they succeeded in Italy, Spain and Germany
is that the relationship of class forces and the desperation of the
economic situtation made their success more assured than in Great Britain
or the Scandanavian countries.

The 1930s are a deeply tragic period because the openings for socialism
were greater than at any time in the century but the official parties of
the left had abandoned Marxism. The reason D&G should be rejected is that
they reject Marxism as well. The Marxism they reject is the bogus Marxism
of the social democracy and Stalinism, not the real thing. This is Harry's
mistake as well. 

>
>Louis: I don't understand in what sense it is "secondary"? "Movements" are
>made up of people interacting socially and politically, those interactions
>are the interactions of individuals and have grown out of the previous
>context of their lives. It seems to me that an adequate answer to the
>question of how fascism as a movement arises MUST include an analysis of
>the internal social-political-psychological dynamics that generated
>something that it makes sense to call a movement. 

An analysis of internal social-political-psychological dynamics? How about
this:

"Now picture to yourself the French bourgeois, how in the throes of this
business panic his trade-crazy brain is tortured, set in a whirl, and
stunned by rumors of coups d'etat and the restoration of universal
suffrage, by the struggle between parliament and the executive power, by
the Fronde war between Orleanists and Legitimists, by the communist
conspiracies in the south of France, by alleged Jacqueries in the
departments of Nievre and Cher, by the advertisements of the different
candidates for the presidency, by the cheapjack solutions offered by the
journals, by the threats of the republicans to uphold the constitution and
universal suffrage by force of arms, by the gospel-preaching emigre heroes
in partibus, who announced that the world would come to an end on the
second Sunday in May, 1852 -- think of all this and you will comprehend why
in this unspeakable, deafening chaos of fusion, revision, prorogation,
constitution, conspiration, coalition, emigration, usurpation, and
revolution, the bourgeois madly snorts at his parliamentary republic:
'Rather an end with terror than terror without end!'"

This is Marx's explanation in the 18th Brumaire why the French bourgeoisie
backed Louis Napoleon who instituted a dictatorship *against* capital in
order to *preserve the rule* of capital. As Robert Tucker points out in his
prefatory remarks, Marx's analysis is a prototype for a Marxist analysis of
fascism. This is the sort of analysis that holds up well after 100 years or
so. I expect that D&G's "analysis" of fascism will have a much shorter
shelf life.
 
>
>Louis: Sure, once again, black nationalism can hardly be understood
>without taking into account "the rise of a black proletariat in the
>northern states". But what was going on with individuals and in the
>interactions of individuals that led 

FW: BLS Daily Reportboundary="---- =_NextPart_000_01BCD495.59E97920"

[Richardson_D]

This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.

-- =_NextPart_000_01BCD495.59E97920
charset="iso-8859-1"

BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1997

RELEASED TODAY:  In April through June of 1997, there were 1,301 mass
layoff actions by employers, resulting in the separation of 274,712
workers from their jobs for more than 30 days In the same period a
year earlier, employers reported that they had laid off 251,617 workers
in 1,345 extended layoff events.  "Seasonal work" was the major reason
cited for the second-quarter 1997 layoffs and accounted for 47 percent
of the events and 52 percent of the separations.  "Contract =
completion,"
"financial difficulty," and "reorganization within the company" =
together
accounted for 26 percent of the events and 28 percent of the =
separations
.=20

__Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Katharine Abraham prepares to
leave her post as head of the Labor Department's main data agency
because the Senate has not confirmed her for a second four-year term,
according to Labor Department sources.  President Clinton "continues to
support her nomination," says Barry Toiv, deputy White House press
secretary.  "We hope she is confirmed by the Senate," he says As of
Oct. 8, William Barron Jr. will be acting BLS commissioner, a post he
held prior to Abraham's appointment A DOLspokesman said that
because there is "no holdover provision" pertaining to Abraham's
appointment, the commissioner "therefore, cannot continue to serve as
BLS commissioner until she is confirmed by the Senate."  The DOL
spokesman said that "until she is confirmed, she will serve as a senior
consultant at the Department of Commerce" "The initial problem is
the administration sent up her nomination late," said Joe Karpinski,
communications director for the Senate Labor and Human Resources
Committee.  When asked if members opposed her nomination, Karpinski
said:  "I'm not sure our members are focused on it.  We really have not
been in a position to see what our members think."  Abraham declined to
comment (Daily Labor Report, page A-7).
__Katharine G. Abraham spent her last day as commissioner of labor
statistics packing up and moving out of her office yesterday, because
the Senate has not confirmed her reappointment.  Unlike most other
senior federal positions, the head of BLS serves a set four-year term
and is not allowed to remain in the job pending confirmation.  She had
to vacate her office because she is no longer authorized to have access
to sensitive data, such as the monthly unemployment figures, prior to
their public release.  The White House sent Abraham's nomination  to =
the
Senate Labor Committee only last month.  A committee spokesman said no
date has been set for a confirmation hearing.  With Congress planning =
to
adjourn next month,  Abraham might be out of her office until sometime
next year.  Meanwhile, some key, potentially controversial decisions =
for
the agency are pending, such as whether and how to adjust the CPI and
others on BLS's federal salary survey (Washington Post, "The =
Federal
Page," page A19).

The number of job cuts announced by businesses declined by 23 percent =
in
September, compared with one month earlier, according to Challenger,
Gray & Christmas Inc., an outplacement firm The number of announced
workforce reductions in September 1997 is 30 percent less than in
September 1996.  September marked the ninth consecutive month that
retail has topped all other industries in job cuts (Daily Labor
Report, page A-10).

Consumer borrowing rose at an unexpectedly slow pace in August, the Fed
reported, further evidence that the economy is not growing at an
inflationary speed (New York Times, page D8)_The slowing
reflected slower spending growth and increased wariness by lenders
.(Washington Post, page C14).

Unmarried domestic partners get health coverage at 12 percent of
companies with 200 or more employees.  Top industries: technology (20
percent), state/local government (17 percent).  Coverage by employer
size is shown in the page 1B chart of USA Today.  Source of the data is
given as KPMG Peat Marwick_The same information is shown in a chart
on page C14 of the Washington Post, but the source is given as the
Bureau of National Affairs Inc.

DUE OUT TOMORROW:  Mass Layoffs in July 1997=20


-- =_NextPart_000_01BCD495.59E97920

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AC4AAEAAOQBQV+ETt9S8AR4AcAABDQAAAERhaWx5IFJlcG9ydAACAXEAAQAAACUA
AAABvNQaSO+zcObZP+AR0ZUGAmCM22AqAAV9IYAAABXP4AAhoB3xHgAxQAENUklD
SEFSRFNPTl9EAAMAGkAAHgAwQAENUklDSEFSRFNPTl9EAAMAGUAA
AgEJEAEAAACECgAAgAoAAN0RAABMWkZ1bDIi

Fw: "State Capitalism"

[michael perelman]

>  As far as bizarre personality cults are concerned, you should not
> forget that Reverend Moon is one of the most powerful political and
> industrial leaders in South Korea.
> 
> Louis Proyect

Robert Parry has a wonderful series on the bizarrities of Rev. Moon and his
coterie: Wierd Sex, drugs, and George Bush

http://www.delve.com/consort.html

Check it out.  Parry's stuff is always first rate.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
916-898-5321
916-898-5901 fax

kathrine abraham

[Michael Perelman]

Why did Clinton not renominate K.A.?  Was it because she had more of a
spine about the CPI than he did?
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Soros marks 10 years of philanthropy in Russia (fwd)

[Michael Hoover]

Forwarded message:
> Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 10:11:04 -0500
> From: Bob Riley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Soros marks 10 years of philanthropy in Russia
> 
> Copyright © 1997 The Associated Press 
> 
> MOSCOW (October 7, 1997) -- As George
> Soros sees it, Russia is well on the road from "robber capitalism" to
> oligarchy -- the rule of the rich. So what is the billionaire
> philanthropist and investor planning to do? Pump more money into it.
> 
> Soros kicked off a two-week philanthropic tour of Russia with the
> announcement Tuesday that he will increase his charity work here --
> already in the hundreds of millions of dollars -- in the hope of
> fostering democracy.
> 
> "I may be naive," he said, "but I have great faith in Russia."
> 
> Soros' visit is timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Soros
> Foundation's first philanthropic initiatives in what was then the Soviet
> Union.
> 
> In that decade, the Hungarian-born and American-made billionaire has
> poured more than $350 million in charitable donations into Russia, and
> has been widely praised for slowing the brain drain of Russian academics
> and scientists, as well as opening Russia to the Internet.
> 
> In a speech marking the anniversary, Soros noted that he also has
> increased his for-profit investments in Russia to more than $2 billion.
> 
> Despite a political and economic situation that he conceded was
> "intolerable," Soros said he saw reason to hope that President Boris
> Yeltsin's government can move the country toward genuine reform.
> 
> For the first time, he said, "I can see a realistic prospect of Russia
> moving in a positive direction."
> 
> Soros made a controversial splash in the Russian market in July when he
> sank $980 million into a consortium's successful bid for a stake in the
> telecommunications monopoly Svyazinvest.
> 
> It was the largest privatization deal ever in Russia, and came under
> withering attack. Some Russian media characterized it as the sort of
> cozy insider sell-off that has typified the sale of many government
> assets.
> 
> However, Soros told Russia's NTV television that he had no intention of
> bidding for an interest in the huge Rosneft oil company when it is
> privatized soon.
> 
> Soros did not say how much more money he intended to donate in Russia,
> nor how it would be spent. He said he would spend most of the next two
> weeks talking to people in a series of "town hall" meetings before
> announcing his foundation's new initiatives.
--