[PEN-L:733] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Preference Formation

[William S. Lear]

On Mon, August 10, 1998 at 15:14:11 (-0700) Ellen Dannin writes:
>...In addition, the US
>has periodically used its trade policies to force other countries to import
>certain quotas of US cigarettes in exchange for trade agreements.

You are being too charitable.  It wasn't "in exchange for trade
agreements", it was in exchange for not being attacked economically
with sanctions of various sorts.  C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon
General, spoke out eloquently before Congress and elsewhere against
this cowardly maneuver.


Bill

[PEN-L:735] Re: Re: Re: Taxpayers

[James Devine]

At 01:27 PM 8/10/98 +0100, you wrote:
>
>
>Jim:...shouldn't we add "plus the benefits of welfare-state programs such as
>unemployment insurance benefits" ?
>then, the wage struggle is about (1) real after-tax private wages plus (2)
>the real net social wage (welfare-state benefits minus taxes on wages).
>IMHO, pushing to raise both of these at the same time is the way to go.
>
>
>Rebecca: I agree that workers struggle can centre around the issue of state
>spending on welfare for the working class. However this does not validate an
>argument that claims that state health care etc for the working class forms
>part of the price of labour power.

why not? are you saying that the "social wage" (after taxes on workers)
isn't part of the value of labor power? if so, why not?

in pen-l solidarity,

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

[PEN-L:734] Re: Saving Private Ryan

[James Devine]

At 10:42 AM 8/11/98 -0400, you wrote:
>The only thing surprising about "Saving Private Ryan" is how conventional
>it is. I fully expected a much more "noir" vision of WWII along the lines
>of Oliver Stone's "Platoon." What I saw was an updated version of such
>1950s classics as "Walk in the Sun," written by Robert Rossen, the CP'er
>who named names.

I haven't seen "Ryan" yet, but I want to ask a question: does the platoon
have the same ethnic mix as in "Walk in the Sun" (as I remember it) or
every WW2 submarine movie (except "Das Boot") or "Forbidden Planet"? That
is, is there one Pole, one Jew, one Irishman, etc.? Part of the WW2 movie
genre is the emphasis on ethnic unity against the "Hun." (It also fit with
the CP vision of the popular front.)

I finally saw "Amistad" -- on video, natch. What's interesting is that it's
hard to see any of the main characters as the Star. The closest, I think,
is not the John Quincy Adams character but instead the lawyer played by
Matthew McConnahey (sp?). But he's so low-key that he doesn't stand out
much. The Cinque character also approaches being the Star. But because his
dialogue is pretty limited (the film being mostly from the white folks'
perspective), he doesn't really make it as the Star. 

The flick seems more story-telling than Star-driven. It was head and
shoulders above Spielberg's previous effort to talk about racism, i.e.,
"The Color Purple" which was execrable.

BTW, I want to second the motion: Louis' movie review is excellent!

in cinematic solidarity,

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

[PEN-L:736] immigration

[Doug Henwood]

I'm looking for a good book or two on the history of U.S. immigration
policy: when did they start regulating immigration and why? How did
employers use immigration (if they did) to divide the workforce and push
down wages? What were the successive structures of immigration policy in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Any advice?

Doug

[PEN-L:739] Re: Tobacco

[Doug Henwood]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>Probably for the same reason so many Russians abused vodka. If you were
>living in a society that you had no control over, lived in oppressively
>monotonous housing, had no chance of material improvement, wouldn't you
>take advantage of every little "kick" that came along?

If I'm remembering my stats right, the U.S. has some of the lower smoking
numbers in the northern hemisphere. So does that mean we're just the
opposite of all these things?

Doug

[PEN-L:740] Re: Re: Tobacco

[Louis Proyect]

>If I'm remembering my stats right, the U.S. has some of the lower smoking
>numbers in the northern hemisphere. So does that mean we're just the
>opposite of all these things?
>
>Doug

No, what it shows is the importance of public education. The mammoth
anti-smoking campaign in the US has been an important factor in reducing
tobacco usage. Most enlightened drug policy spokespeople argue that
cocaine, heroin and marijuana should be treated like tobacco. They should
be legal and there should be extensive education about their dangers. Of
course, the interesting thing is that tobacco is the most dangerous
substance of all these.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)

[PEN-L:741] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Preference Formation

[William S. Lear]

On Tue, August 11, 1998 at 12:56:19 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
>...
>Today's Financial Times has an article on how Eastern European are taking
>up American smokes. Of course the marketing prowess of U.S. tobacco has a
>lot to do with this, not to mention the "mystique" of America. But, why'd
>so many Eastern Europeans smoke in the days when there was no advertising?

I just spoke with one of our system administrators here at work, who
is from Hungary.  He moved here in 1984 and remembers that cigarettes
were quite cheap.  He said Philip Morris used to run some cigarette
manufacturing plants, but that there was no advertising, as we'd
expect.  He did say that you could buy Marlboro, but that it was much
more expensive than the local brands.  He said that though they wanted
for other goods, they never seemed to want for tobacco, nor alcohol.


Bill

[PEN-L:744] FW: Fwd: House Defeats Local Sovereignty

[Bove, Roger E.]

 --
From: Philadsa
To: QuinnKM
Subject: Fwd: House Defeats Local Sovereignty
Date: Monday, August 10, 1998 11:11PM

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

 --part0_902805107_boundary

Forwarded from the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network (PCAN):

 --part0_902805107_boundary

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Return-path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: House Defeats Local Sovereignty
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1998 10:09:49 EDT

Update on Kucinich Amendment: August 6, 1998
1) Summary of outcome   2) PA Congressional votes 3) Organize meetings with
your U.S. Rep and Senator during recess

1) Late last night, an amendment to protect state, local and tribal laws 
from
the World Trade Organization (WTO) was narrowly defeated by only 28 votes.

The Administration and the House leadership worked hard to derail the
amendment.

In a letter circulated by Rep. Jim Kolbe (R, AZ), US Trade Representative
Charlene Barshefsky claimed that the amendment was unnecessary and
expressed her strong opposition to it.

Deputy Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat spent most of the day yesterday
calling on Democratic Members of Congress to oppose the amendment. In this
lobbying, Eizenstat was greatly helped by the fact that the House
Republican leadership delayed the vote on the amendment and restricted
debate on the House floor.

To read the debate on the amendment, search the Congressional Record for
August 5, 1998 online at .  The
Kucinich amendment is amendment #49 to the DEPARTMENTS OF COMMERCE,
JUSTICE, AND STATE, AND JUDICIARY, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT,
1999

Thank You!

The office of Rep. Dennis Kucinich asked me the pass on the Congressman's
heartfelt thank you to all of you who took the time to contact your Member
of Congress in support of this amendment. Rep. Kucinich's office received
dozens of emails, faxes and phone calls from people all over the country
who worked to gain support for this amendment.

The Administration has won a pyrrhic victory. The Administration has denied
that it would sue a state or local authority whose laws allegedly violate
WTO agreements. Consequently, the Administration has now made it virtually
politically impossible to take that action against cities and states in the
future.

Although it narrowly missed passage, this amendment has helped send a
powerful message to the Administration that it should safeguard state and
local laws against pressure from the WTO.

Thank you again for all your help. For further updates on this amendment
and other actions to defend state and local selective purchasing laws,
contact me at the below address.

Simon Billenness
* for the New England Burma Roundtable *
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

2) How our PA delegation voted:
Yes: Goodling, Borski, Holden, Brady, Coyne, Klink, Mascara, McDade Fattah,
Fox, Weldon, Murtha, Doyle

No: Greenwood, Peterson, Pitts, Kanjorski, English, McHale, Gekas

Not Voting: Shuster

Call your Member of Congress at (800) 985-8762 to thank or criticize them
for their vote on this amendment.

3) We lost on this one, but we can't let them win on the big ones.  IMF, 
NAFTA
for Africa, Fast Track, and more will be decided in September, after the
recess.  This makes this August recess of UTMOST IMPORTANCE!  Organize
meetings with your House Member (No on IMF and Fast Track!) and Senator (No 
on
African NAFTA and Omnibus Trade Bill).  Meet with the members themselves or
with staffers if that's all you can get, but make sure each PA Member of
Congress  and both Senators hear loud and clear while they're home that PA
does not want these trade bills!

Michael Morrill
Pennsylvania Fair Trade Campaign
c/o PA Consumer Action Network
223 North Brobst St.
Reading, PA 19607
(610) 775-5958-v
(610) 775-2953-f
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

 --part0_902805107_boundary--

[PEN-L:745] Re: Tobacco

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 01:01 PM 8/11/98 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote:
>Probably for the same reason so many Russians abused vodka. If you were
>living in a society that you had no control over, lived in oppressively
>monotonous housing, had no chance of material improvement, wouldn't you
>take advantage of every little "kick" that came along?


Lou, that is bull.  Alcohol consumption in EE was deliberately encouraged
under the feudal regime (which lasted until 1883) to increase the profits
of landowners who also controlled alcohol production.  I do not know if
that that is also true for tobacco, though.

Alcohol and tobacco served an important social function, though - as an
ice-breaking and male-bonding ritual.  My Dad who was an exec in the
shipbuilding industry said that no deal with the Russians was possible
without talking it over the table filled with bottles.

PS.  Your essay on Private Ryan was superb!

Regards,

Wojtek Sokolowski

[PEN-L:748] apology

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

 I gather that a response I made to a message on 
"Saving Private Ryan" came here (although I have not yet 
seen it).  I sent it in response to a posting by Louis 
Proyect on his marxism list.  That explains my explaining 
who I am, which should not be necessary for anybody here.  
Sorry for cluttering things up.
Barkley Rosser

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:749] tobacco

[Michael Perelman]

One reason tobacco is more used elsewhere than in the U.S. was its
wonderful qualities of addition.  States used it to raise taxes.

France, for example, forbade the planting of the crop.  It was easier to
control as an import.  Then it used the drug as a cash cow.

I would not be surprised if Eastern Europe had done the same thing.

The most curious feature of smoking is its identification with
intellectuals.  Poets, like politicians, are often thought of as sitting
in smoke filled rooms.  Professors, smoking pipes.  Deeply inhaling,
while deeply thinking.  When did that image begin?

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

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

[PEN-L:750] Re: tobacco

[Louis Proyect]

>The most curious feature of smoking is its identification with
>intellectuals.  Poets, like politicians, are often thought of as sitting
>in smoke filled rooms.  Professors, smoking pipes.  Deeply inhaling,
>while deeply thinking.  When did that image begin?
>
>--
>Michael Perelman

Interesting point. Back when I was a freshman at Bard College, everybody
smoked. Everybody. The really cool people smokes Galuoise, which I couldn't
stand the smell of. Some guy named Fortune Ryan who was always raving about
Berdayev smoked Galuoises continuously. You knew he was coming from 50 feet
away. The smell of the smoke gave us warning.

Godard films were filled with smokers. Jean-Paul Belmondo chained-smoked in
"Breathless." The screenwriter character in "Contempt" who idolized
American movies--especially "Oceans 11," never let a cigarette out of his
mouth.

Nicaraguans smoked heavily. All the gringo computer programmers I used to
bring down wore sandals, ate granola and went jogging in the morning. The
Nicaraguans smoked unfiltered cigarettes, the women wore makeup and enjoyed
read meat.

Personally I quit smoking the day the surgeon general's report came out in
1963 linking cigarettes to cancer. I used to smoke a pack of Pall-Malls a
day and really enjoyed them. Nowadays I have no bad habits except
quarreling on the Internet.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)

[PEN-L:751] Re: Re: Sociologists and others who lie

[Michael Perelman]

Am I the only one who sees a distinction between Leo, investigating police
interrogation methods, and Ellis, taking advantage of people who are not harming
anyone else?  How about the Greenpeace person who infiltrated the fishing fleet or
the reporters investigating Food Lion?
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

[PEN-L:754] Re: Re: re Bhoddi vs Proyect

[Doug Henwood]

Eugene P. Coyle wrote:

>One of the earliest environmental pieces is by Oliver Goldsmith about the
>expropriation of another commons:
>
>fromThe Deserted Village

Raymond Williams says of this in The Country & the City:

If it is only the social history of the village that is in question, this
simultaneous eviction of poetry is undeniably curious. But what happens is
that from the intense personal situation, in which the independence of the
poet is insufficient to maintain his life, and in which all the humanity he
claims to represent is crushed and driven out by the coarse and unfeeling
order of the new rich, a landscape extends, which is that of the village
suffering a similar ignominy. The rural dispossession is, as we have seen,
incisively observed. Its
facts are present, palpably, in their own right. Yet the dispossession is
subject, also, to another process; what I have called elsewhere, in
relation to Gissing and Orwell, a negative identification. That is to say,
the exposure and suffering of the writer, in his own social situation, are
identified with the facts of a social history that is beyond him. It is not
that he cannot then see the real social history; he is often especially
sensitive to it, as a present fact. But the identification between his own
suffering and that of a social group beyond him is inevitably negative, in
the end. The present is accurately and powerfully seen, but its real
relations, to past and future, are inaccessible, because the governing
development is that of the writer himself: a feeling about the past, an
idea about the future, into which, by what is truly an intersection, an
observed present is arranged. We need not doubt the warmth of Goldsmith's
feelings about the men driven from their village: that connection is
definite. The structure becomes ambiguous only when this shared feeling is
extended to memory and imagination, for what takes over then, in language
and idea, is a different pressure: the social history of the writer. Thus
the nostalgic portraits of parson and schoolmaster are of men independent
and honoured in their own place, supported by a whole way of living in
which independence and community are actual. Against this selfdependent
power, which is also that of the poet, the encroachment of wealth and
fashion is fatal. Yet to be a poet is, ironically, to be a pastoral poet:
the social condition of poetry-it is as far as Goldsmith gets-is the
idealised pastoral economy. The destruction of one is, or is made to stand
for, the destruction of the other. And then the village itself becomes a
pastoral and a poetic mode: its expropriation is assigned to the general
vices of wealth and luxury. Thus it is very significant that the old
village was both happy and productive, while the new condition is both
unhappy and unproductive-

  One only master grasps the whole domain,
  And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain,
  No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
  But choked with sedges, works its weedy way;
  Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
  The hollow sounding bittern guards its nest;
  Amidst thy desert walk the lapwing flies
  And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.

It would indeed be easy if the social process were really that. But the
actual history, in which the destruction of old social relations was
accompanied by an increased use and fertility of the land, is overridden by
the imaginative process in which, when the pastoral order is destroyed,
creation is 'stinted', the brook is 'choked', the cry of the bittern is
'hollow', the lapwing's cries 'unvaried'. This creation of a 'desert'
landscape is an imaginative rather than a social process; it is what the
new order does to the poet, not to the land. The memory of'sweet Auburn' is
of a kind of community, a kind of feeling, and a kind of verse, which are
no longer able to survive, under the pressure of'trade's unfeeling train',
but which equally cannot be gone beyond, into new relationship and
imagination; which can only go into exile and a desperate protest, beyond
history-

  Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,
  Redress the rigours of th' inclement clime.

It is exiled poetry, at the end of The Deserted Village, which must teach,
hopefully:

  That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
  As oceans sweep the labour'd mole away;
  While selfdependent power can time defy,
  As rocks resist the billows and the sky.

Here, with unusual precision, what we can later call a Romantic structure
of feeling-the assertion of nature against industry and of poetry against
trade; the isolation of humanity and community into the idea of culture,
against the real social pressures of the time - is projected. We can catch
its echoes, exactly, in Blake, in Wordsworth, and in Shelley.

[PEN-L:755] American Arrogance: a small example

[Gar W. Lipow]

The Monday, Aug 19 issue of My local rag (it hardly deserves the word
"newspaper") reprinted an article from the LA Times article "Bombing
leave Kenyans asking; Why here?" Like most LA Times articles, the last
two paragraphs contained the story which should have led. These
paragraphs in full say:

From the moment the gigantic bomb exploded in a parking lane behind
the U.S. Embassy, there have been two disasters playing out in
Nairobi: one behind the iron fences of the embassy building and the
other in the chaotic streets of the capital
[All caps added by me] RESCUE EFFORTS, CONDUCTED SEVERAL YARDS APART,
HAVE BEEN SEPARATED BY ARMED U.S. SOLDIERS. KENYAN POLICE HAVE NOT
BEEN ALLOWED TO SET FOOT ON EMBASSY PROPERTY. MANY OF THE EMBASSY'S
INJURED WERE FLOWN TO HOSPITALS IN SOUTH AFRICA, THE BEST ON THE
CONTINENT, WHILE ORDINARY KENYANS COMPETED FOR BEEDS IN CROWDED
NAIROBI HOSPITALS.

[PEN-L:756] American assholes

[Doug Henwood]

Gar W. Lipow quoted from the LA Times:

>   [All caps added by me] RESCUE EFFORTS, CONDUCTED SEVERAL YARDS APART,
>HAVE BEEN SEPARATED BY ARMED U.S. SOLDIERS. KENYAN POLICE HAVE NOT
>BEEN ALLOWED TO SET FOOT ON EMBASSY PROPERTY. MANY OF THE EMBASSY'S
>INJURED WERE FLOWN TO HOSPITALS IN SOUTH AFRICA, THE BEST ON THE
>CONTINENT, WHILE ORDINARY KENYANS COMPETED FOR BEEDS IN CROWDED
>NAIROBI HOSPITALS.

FINANCIAL TIMES - MONDAY AUGUST 10 1998 
 
KENYA: Rescue teams turn on US marines
By Michela Wrong in Nairobi

"The Americans have behaved like assholes from day one," snorted the
ambulance worker. His scathing comment summarised the feelings of many
of those standing in the cold, waiting to see whether microphones and
sniffer dogs provided by Israel would yield further signs of life below
the concrete and metal.

In the three days since a massive bomb ripped through Nairobi's city
centre, heavily armed marines working with grim efficiency have cordoned
off the shattered US embassy building behind a screen of barbed wire and
grey sheeting.

But by last night their failure to join the frantic excavation efforts
atop the huge pile of rubble once known as Ufundi House had triggered
amazement and fury among exhausted rescue workers.

After a French army civil defence unit had arrived to reinforce the
Israeli-led operation, a Kenyan police captain commented sarcastically:
"The French are here, the Israelis are here, the Red Cross are helping
and the Hindis are giving us food. Where are our American brothers?"
Situated behind the embassy, the seven-storey building housing insurance
offices and a secretarial college took the main brunt of Friday
morning's blast. While the embassy remained standing, the old block
simply folded. Until Saturday night the calls of victims buried under
the debris could still be heard.

But despite growing evidence that the collapsed Ufundi House, rather
than the legation, would eventually give up the greatest number of
bodies, US marines remained behind their self-appointed perimeter,
warning away outsiders attempting to enter the document-strewn premises.
"I went into the embassy soon after the blast to pull a victim out and a
marine pulled a gun on me and shouted at me to back off," said David
Tredrea, a trauma specialist. "Since then I don't believe a single one
of them has helped in excavation on Ufundi House."

Other rescue workers complained that in the hours following the blast,
when passers-by scrabbled with their hands at the wreckage, US marines
brushed away requests for shovels and digging tools. "People were asking
for a drill so that we could get some air to the people we could hear
inside. But they refused," said a Red Cross worker.

A US embassy spokesman, William Barr, said the criticisms were unfair,
given that overwhelmed US officials were still trying to locate scores
of missing employees and establish how many had died inside the embassy
itself.

"We don't have a whole load of people on the ground as it is," he said.
Prudence Bushnell, ambassador, acknowledged there might have been "some
misunderstanding", but stressed the marines were trying to protect a
site that could yield vital clues to FBI investigators. "You have to
cordon off in order to maintain the evidence," she said. "It looks as
though we're trying to keep people out, but we're trying to keep the
site intact. It is in everybody's interest to find out who is behind the
evil."

More than 300 US investigators, medical personnel and rescue specialists
are heading for Nairobi with equipment and medical supplies.
But according to members of the Israeli team - veterans of earthquakes
and suicide bombings who took over excavation operations at the weekend
- the chances of finding survivors become virtually nil after the first
72 hours.

By yesterday good news had become thin on the ground. An injured man was
pulled from Ufundi House still alive on Saturday after 36 hours below
the debris, and there was a flurry of excitement yesterday when a
caretaker's wife and her 13-year-old son walked dazed from the
still-standing Co-operative Bank House.

Scores of US personnel will continue to fly into Nairobi with expertise
and equipment in the coming hours. But the time for miracles has
probably already drawn to a close.

For disillusioned residents, the mass arrival of US personnel will smack
more of a Washington exercise aimed at reassuring worried voters back
home than one aimed at saving Kenyan lives.

[PEN-L:759] Re: The Political Consequences of Bhoddi

[boddhisatva]

To whom...,



The question is not one of capitulating to the multinationals, but
of simply realizing that they are a fact of life, and so is the modern
industrial economy.  The question is not buying foreign floor wax for dirt
floors but building, for example, factories that process local woods to
make modern laminate flooring instead of selling raw logs.  The East Asian
"tiger"  economies didn't capitulate to the West, but Toyota didn't start
out in the luxury car business either.  You don't go into businesses -
like soft drinks - where you are simply trying to do direct substitution. 
Coke is good at what they do.  Let them do it and let developing economies
find other things to do. 

Import substitution is just bad economics.  Who would council
anyone to go into the wheat business right now (or corn or soybeans for
that matter)?  Of course there has to be some local agriculture but
developing countries don't need to learn to crawl when they can already
run industrial factories.  Why is it that capitalists can open modern
factories in developing nations but well-meaning leftists want to improve
peasant farming techniques.  You can improve peasant farming until it's
perfect but you're putting a silk hat on a pig.  Peasant farming sucks.
It's a miserable life and no reasonable person who is not looking for
asceticism wants to engage in it.  

What we produce *obviously* determines a very large part of our
relations with the rest of the world.  Right now the working people are
alienated from that intercourse.  That doesn't mean Coca-Cola the soft
drink is evil - or the way it's produced, or the people who produce it.
The corporation is evil, but that is an entirely different issue.  

What I am saying fundamentally is that leftists have to stop this
absolute association of commerce with capitalism.  




peace

[PEN-L:760] Re: Re: Re: re Bhoddi vs Proyect

[James Michael Craven]

On 11 Aug 98 at 14:46, James Devine wrote:

> Eugene Coyle writes: 
> >One of the earliest environmental pieces is by Oliver Goldsmith about the
> >expropriation of another commons:
> >
> >fromThe Deserted Village
> 
> (snip)
> 
> This connection between the capitalism vs. the Indians discussion and the
> "deserted village" (the abandoned English countryside) tells me that we
> should link the former to Marx's discussion of primitive accumulation in
> England, at the end of CAPITAL, vol. I. The Indians, that is, are receiving
> the bloody brunt of primitive accumulation (PA). Unless, of course, they
> fight back with Indian bingo or whatever. 
> 
> One thing that's noticeable about Marx's discussion is that he's shed the
> technological-determinist approach of some of his earlier works ("handmill
> gives you feudalism," yadda yadda) and that "the enlightened one" seems to
> cling to. In desperate brevity, PA is a political movement that sets off an
> economic movement. 
> 
> Thus, the possibility exists for a counter-PA political movement that
> unifies the Indians with the urban working class, pressuring the state from
> below to fight not only PA but the normal exploitative accumulation that
> characterizes capitalism. Maybe something like that is happening in Brazil
> with the Workers Party. (I'm afraid that one of Louis' many missives may
> have had information about this but I forgot it or never read it because
> there were so many.) 
> 
> I wish boddhi ("the enlightened one") would give up his
> extremely-irritating pretensions and meditate on Socrates' dictum that "all
> I know is that I know nothing" for awhile. Even better, he could start
> using a pseudonym on pen-l, such as "Kevin."
> 
> in pen-l solidarity,
> 
> Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
> http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html
> 

Response: I think Jim Devine is dead on--including the part about 
using pretentious pseudo-nyms.

Indians are pointing to the mechanisms, forms, practices etc of 
primitive accumulation and expropriation of Indian lands for several 
purposes;  the logic/interests/consequences of primitive 
accumulation: a)  continue with present-day accumulation; b) allow 
using present-day bourgeois "sacreds" to indict and expose the very 
same property and class relations they "protect" and expose the 
hypocrisy and class content of these "sacreds" c) forces and 
mechanisms of the past are alive and well within the present shaping 
a dismal future of total extinction without radical action;  d) 
expose the notion of pioneering genius and "entrepreneurship" as the 
basis for original accumulation and present-day property, wealth and 
income structures and distributions; e) reveal the common threads and 
connections between mechanisms of exploitation of Indians on the one 
hand and other groups of oppressed on the other hand; f) allow legal 
and extra-legal challenges of present-day brougeois relations and 
property ownership/control structures using the "sacred" laws, myths, 
traditions etc of the bourgeoisie themselves--aiding the non-Indian working 
class with precedents, weakening of the common enemy, exposing the 
true nature and origins and dynamics of capitalism and capital 
accumulation etc; g) open debates about what is really "primitive", 
what is real "civilization", what is a real "nation", what does 
"sovereignty" really mean etc.

That is just for openers. Struggles of Indian People have nothing to 
do with forcing working class people out of their meagre homes under 
the banner of return of Indian lands etc--that is what the powers 
that be would have you believe. Nor are these struggles about 
returning to beaver hunting, sending smoke signals, ludditeism etc. 
They are about exposing the true nature, origins, dynamics, 
trajectories, consequences--past, present and future--of primitive as 
well as present-day and ongoing accumulation of capital and that is 
in the interest of all oppressed peoples under capitalism. They are 
about basic justice; these struggles are about turning bourgeois 
property rights on their head, using those rights as a tactic without 
necessarily legitimating them or accepting those rights as natural 
and eternal or situational--as the bourgeoisie would have us do.
But most of all, the struggles are about stopping genocide before it 
is too late and that is in the interest of every person Indian or 
non-Indian being chewed up and spit out by capitalism.

Jim Craven

 James Craven 
 Dept. of Economics,Clark College
 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Tel: (360) 992-2283 Fax: 992-2863
--
"The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards Indians; their land and 
property shall never be taken from them without their consent." 
(Northwest Ordinance, 1787, Ratified by Congress 1789)

"...but this letter being unofficial and priv

[PEN-L:763] Re: Preference Formation

[boddhisatva]

C. Lear,


As a former professional cook and chef I can tell you absolutely
that people *want* sugar, salt, and buttery grease.  All you have to do is
balance the flavors a bit so they can really enjoy it and describe it on
the menu in a way that allows them to happily fool themselves. I've served
hundreds of pieces of fish slathered in beurre blanc to people who seemed
to invariably remark how "light" it was - when it was covered in the
equivalent of half a stick of butter.  They knew what "beurre" meant, but
with the addition of some wine, seasonings, and a little citrus, they
didn't care.  Do you think the onions and pickle relish on a Big Mac are
there by accident? That's sugar to satisfy those brain cells and some
vinegar to make the grease more appealing and give it that taste of
buttery fatty acids.

Look at what the French eat.  There's no corporate influence in
classic French cuisine and they are sucking down sausages and Camembert
like there's no tomorrow.  There wouldn't be, either, if they didn't drink
all that wine.  You like Thai food?  Ask your doctor what she thinks about
fish sauce and coconut milk as ingredients.  I wouldn't mention the palm
sugar, though.  How about classic Chinese?  Care for some salt-crusted
pigeon? How about good old Beijing Duck? There's a health snack for you -
soy-marinated, high-cholesterol meat, and that beautiful, crisp skin
loaded with sugar, salt, and nice, pure duck fat.  Wash that down with a
half-pot of high-caffeine tea, run over to your cardiologist and see if
she doesn't just punch you.

Or, you could take you chances with a bacon cheeseburger topped
with ketchup or barbecue sauce and a Coke.  More sugar, less caffeine, but
the cholesterol is about a wash.  The only problem with American fast food
is that it's so cheaply made you can taste the grease.  That's why they
need all the advertizing.  Really good food sells itself - and then gives
you the same stroke. 

One of the most popular additions to "fat-free" food is glycerine. 
Glycerine, of course, is an undigestible petro-fat that can't be
metabolized so it simply remains in the gut. That's why it works as a
laxative.  It also gives "mouth feel" and soft consistency, especially to
baked goods (it helps keep them from drying out, too).  There's nothing
unhealthy about taking in a bit of glycerine, and it has no taste, but ask
yourself why even gourmet bakeries have been forced to go to this extreme
to satisfy their customers.  People want the fat, the sugar and the salt. 
They demand it. If one establishment doesn't give it too them, they will
find another. 



peace, eat, drink, and be merry

[PEN-L:764] Re: re Bhoddi vs Proyect

[boddhisatva]

To whom..,


Look, I never said that indigenous people should give up their
culture.  The only thing I said about culture was that it is entirely
appropriate for native people to be able to carry out rituals and entirely
necessary that native people be respected.  I questioned whether their
cultures can survive a great shift in mode of production but it was a
*question*.  


What I don't question is that the ancient economies of indigenous
people are not viable, as C. Phillips points out.  People raising children
in hunter-gatherer lifestyles in modern Canada and America might be cited
for child abuse.  They would certainly be below the poverty line.  Thus
the question becomes how a group of people, isolated by prejudice and
alienation from the dominant culture, can join the struggle to free the
world's oppressed people - themselves included. 




peace

[PEN-L:765] Re: Re: re Bhoddi vs Proyect

[boddhisatva]

C. Proyect,


I'm all for "wresting land from the ruling class" but to do what
with? Land and 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee. 




peace

[PEN-L:766] Re: Re: re Bhoddi vs Proyect

[boddhisatva]

C. Craven,



So the native Canadians get the land and do what?  Are they going
to open casinos?  Are they going to log, farm or mine?  All those are
pretty depressed industries right now.  Where are they going to get the
money to develop the land?  Do you think the people they get the money
from are going to respect indigenous culture?


I think the last time I was playing the slots up in Connecticut, I
might have heard one of the waitresses wearing a bucksking minidress
saying something like "Welcome to the Mohegan Sun, victory for the working
class", but I'm not sure. 





peace

[PEN-L:769] Re: Re: Re: Shotguns and machetes

[boddhisatva]

C. Sinha,


I don't think physics is cultural.  Hydro-power just does more work
- it has more physical capacity - than do river fish.  I'm not saying that
simply justifies throwing away river fish populations, not by a long shot,
but the comparison C. Proyect made was false. 


You ask: "How can you separate forces of production from the
relations of production?"  That is what was once known as the 64,000 dollar
question.  It's not easy, certainly, but I don't think everything has been
tried.  My approach has always been a more syndicalist one - for which I've
been labeled a capitalist stooge on Marxist lists.  My focus is on capital
and credit.  I see capitalism as a monopoly on capital and access to credit. 


I believe the market is basically a democratic structure. I reject
the idea that there is a real, rational, undeformed labor market that
makes the the divisions of labor necessarily into class divisions.  What
makes class divisions is a worker's relationship with the property
relations of the ruling class.  Furthermore, there is clearly a difference
between selling goods and selling people.  A future order which included
the idea of economic citizenship - real ownership rights based on
citizenship and/or belonging to a collective firm - would necessarily
undermine the tendency for *wealth* to accumulate, since a large measure
of wealth would be thereby granted at the outset. I'm fairly indifferent
to disparities in income above a certain base level.  We know that the
disparity in wealth dwarfs the disparity in income. 


The disparity in wealth also means that the owning class has
access to capital - and far more importantly, credit - that gives it
tremendous power.  A democratization of the process of granting credit
would undermine even that advantage that higher *income* earners would
have in this future system.  




peace

[PEN-L:770] Re: immigration

[hoov]

> I'm looking for a good book or two on the history of U.S. immigration
> policy: when did they start regulating immigration and why? How did
> employers use immigration (if they did) to divide the workforce and push
> down wages? What were the successive structures of immigration policy in
> the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Any advice?
> Doug

check out Franklin S. Adams, "American Immigration Policy: How Strait
the Gate," _Law and Contemporary Social Problems_, Vol. 45, Number 2
(Spring 1982)...

the first immigration law that set quotas was passed by Congress in 
1921...they were based on the ethnic/racial mixture of the population in 
1910 (I think)...racial prejudice, anti-Semitism, anti-immigant labor, 
anti-communism, post-WW1 patriotism were all factors...Michael Hoover

[PEN-L:771] Re: Peasant Farming Sucks ???

[boddhisatva]

C. Perelman,


Again I say, farmers with a thousand acres of prime winter wheat
land and tractors and combines are having trouble making a go of it.  Peasant
farming not only sucks as work, the pay is worse than any of the jobs you
mentioned.  Peasants aren't working in their gardens, they're working in
their net worth.  




peace

[PEN-L:775] Re: immigration

[John Exdell]

I would recommend you check out Rogers Smith's CIVIC IDEALS: CONFLICTING
VISIONS OF CITIZENSHIP IN U.S. HISTORY (Yale 1997).  It's about much more
than immigration, but does discuss throughout how immigration policy was
shaped by beliefs about what nationalities could be trusted to be
"republican", and beliefs about which belonged to the "white race".  Smith
argues that doctrines of white supremacy were an enduring intellectual
force, with an independent impact on immigration policy quite distinct from
employers pursuit of cheap labor.

At 11:44 AM 8/11/98 -0400, you wrote:
>I'm looking for a good book or two on the history of U.S. immigration
>policy: when did they start regulating immigration and why? How did
>employers use immigration (if they did) to divide the workforce and push
>down wages? What were the successive structures of immigration policy in
>the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Any advice?
>
>Doug
>
>

[PEN-L:780] Re: Re: adieu boddhi? <13777.10954.63802.632924@localhost>

[Gar W. Lipow]

Me three. I usually disagree with Boddhi, but I've seen worse -- much
of it on this list. Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks to me
like Boddhi is being thrown off for intellectual disagreement rather
than behavior. At least I don't remember him having to apologize for
personal attacts on anyone, or being warned to change x, y, or z
behavior or risk being expelled. 

Les Schaffer wrote:
> 
> > ">" == Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> >> Just a couple of words on Boddhi's proposed 'resignation'.  I
> >> don't think he is disrupting the list,
> 
> >> The bloke is clever, articulate, quite brave, and often funny.
> 
> i dont know if the input of a lurker counts on this list, but i mostly
> agree with these 2 points of Rob here (not so much on the content of
> what Boddhi says) and yeah, the heat has ratcheted up a couple notches
> recently, but then the d(elete) button works wonders if i grow weary,
> and the responses to him, even though also heated, have good content
> to them.
> 
> in any case, if you survey the overall trend of pen-l posts during
> this latest boddhi-war, you find enough variety that clearly the list
> behavior has not been entrained by the individual ratcheting up...
> 
> anyway, and this is apropos of nothing, really, but to those that
> recoil at the smugness of bevans nickname:
> 
> 'boddhisattva' DOES NOT MEAN 'enlightened one'.
> 
> in the buddhist world-view a boddhisattva delays his/her (final)
> enlightenment and works in such a way that all other 'beings' are
> enlightened first.
> 
> and don't ask me what THAT means
> 
> les schaffer

[PEN-L:777] adieu bhoddi?

[michael]

I have just written to Bhoddi to ask him to sign of the list.  I could
save myself some grief by doing this unannounced.  I will accept the
protests about censorship and the like for a day, but after that I would
appreciate leaving the matter drop.

Bhoddi is the first person to be asked to leave since Maleki.  I try to do
this as rarely as possible.
 -- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:773] Re: Re: Re: Re: re Bhoddi vs Proyect

[boddhisatva]

C. Craven,



So what you're trying to say is that you have no answer to my
questions.  Is that it?  I might have missed something because I was too
self-absorbed to read all of your hissy-fit.  




peace

[PEN-L:772] Re: Re: Re: re Bhoddi vs Proyect

[Eugene P. Coyle]

Doug, thanks for that post / excerpt from Raymond Williams.  I've wanted to
learn more of the context of Goldsmith's work.  I know Goldsmith wrote more
about the environment, an essay perhaps, but have lost the cite.  Now I'm
energized to locate that.

Gene


>Eugene P. Coyle wrote:
>
>>One of the earliest environmental pieces is by Oliver Goldsmith about the
>>expropriation of another commons:
>>
>>fromThe Deserted Village
>
>Raymond Williams says of this in The Country & the City:
>
>If it is only the social history of the village that is in question, this
>simultaneous eviction of poetry is undeniably curious. But what happens is
>that from the intense personal situation, in which the independence of the
>poet is insufficient to maintain his life, and in which all the humanity he
>claims to represent is crushed and driven out by the coarse and unfeeling
>order of the new rich, a landscape extends, which is that of the village
>suffering a similar ignominy. The rural dispossession is, as we have seen,
>incisively observed. Its
>facts are present, palpably, in their own right. Yet the dispossession is
>subject, also, to another process; what I have called elsewhere, in
>relation to Gissing and Orwell, a negative identification. That is to say,
>the exposure and suffering of the writer, in his own social situation, are
>identified with the facts of a social history that is beyond him. It is not
>that he cannot then see the real social history; he is often especially
>sensitive to it, as a present fact. But the identification between his own
>suffering and that of a social group beyond him is inevitably negative, in
>the end. The present is accurately and powerfully seen, but its real
>relations, to past and future, are inaccessible, because the governing
>development is that of the writer himself: a feeling about the past, an
>idea about the future, into which, by what is truly an intersection, an
>observed present is arranged. We need not doubt the warmth of Goldsmith's
>feelings about the men driven from their village: that connection is
>definite. The structure becomes ambiguous only when this shared feeling is
>extended to memory and imagination, for what takes over then, in language
>and idea, is a different pressure: the social history of the writer. Thus
>the nostalgic portraits of parson and schoolmaster are of men independent
>and honoured in their own place, supported by a whole way of living in
>which independence and community are actual. Against this selfdependent
>power, which is also that of the poet, the encroachment of wealth and
>fashion is fatal. Yet to be a poet is, ironically, to be a pastoral poet:
>the social condition of poetry-it is as far as Goldsmith gets-is the
>idealised pastoral economy. The destruction of one is, or is made to stand
>for, the destruction of the other. And then the village itself becomes a
>pastoral and a poetic mode: its expropriation is assigned to the general
>vices of wealth and luxury. Thus it is very significant that the old
>village was both happy and productive, while the new condition is both
>unhappy and unproductive-
>
>  One only master grasps the whole domain,
>  And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain,
>  No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
>  But choked with sedges, works its weedy way;
>  Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
>  The hollow sounding bittern guards its nest;
>  Amidst thy desert walk the lapwing flies
>  And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.
>
>It would indeed be easy if the social process were really that. But the
>actual history, in which the destruction of old social relations was
>accompanied by an increased use and fertility of the land, is overridden by
>the imaginative process in which, when the pastoral order is destroyed,
>creation is 'stinted', the brook is 'choked', the cry of the bittern is
>'hollow', the lapwing's cries 'unvaried'. This creation of a 'desert'
>landscape is an imaginative rather than a social process; it is what the
>new order does to the poet, not to the land. The memory of'sweet Auburn' is
>of a kind of community, a kind of feeling, and a kind of verse, which are
>no longer able to survive, under the pressure of'trade's unfeeling train',
>but which equally cannot be gone beyond, into new relationship and
>imagination; which can only go into exile and a desperate protest, beyond
>history-
>
>  Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,
>  Redress the rigours of th' inclement clime.
>
>It is exiled poetry, at the end of The Deserted Village, which must teach,
>hopefully:
>
>  That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
>  As oceans sweep the labour'd mole away;
>  While selfdependent power can time defy,
>  As rocks resist the billows and the sky.
>
>Here, with unusual precision, what we can later call a Romantic structure
>of feeling-the assertion of nature against industry and of poetry against
>trade; the isolation of humanity and community into the idea of culture,

[PEN-L:768] Re: Re: Re: re Bhoddi vs Proyect

[James Michael Craven]

On 11 Aug 98 at 19:51, boddhisatva wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   C. Craven,
> 
> 
> 
>   So the native Canadians get the land and do what?  Are they going
> to open casinos?  Are they going to log, farm or mine?  All those are
> pretty depressed industries right now.  Where are they going to get the
> money to develop the land?  Do you think the people they get the money
> from are going to respect indigenous culture?
> 
> 
>   I think the last time I was playing the slots up in Connecticut, I
> might have heard one of the waitresses wearing a bucksking minidress
> saying something like "Welcome to the Mohegan Sun, victory for the working
> class", but I'm not sure. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   peace

Your snotty remarks, repleat with your own ignorance about Indian 
issues, struggles and concerns, coupled with your phony and very 
pretentious and self-absorbed pseudonym suggest to me that you are 
simply not worth more than these words in response. Aren't there any 
libertarian nets for you to play on? Oh I forgot, there you will find 
an whole host of snotty, pretentious, self-absorbed, selfish, 
now-it-all types and I guess it can get a bit boring with your own 
kind.

Jim Craven


 James Craven 
 Dept. of Economics,Clark College
 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Tel: (360) 992-2283 Fax: 992-2863
--
"The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards Indians; their land and 
property shall never be taken from them without their consent." 
(Northwest Ordinance, 1787, Ratified by Congress 1789)

"...but this letter being unofficial and private, I may with safety give you a more
 extensive view of our policy respecting the Indians, that you may better comprehend 
the parts dealt to to you in detail through the official channel, and observing the 
system of which they make a part, conduct yourself in unison with it in cases where 
you are obliged to act without instruction...When they withdraw themselves to the 
culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are their 
extensive forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in exchange 
for necessaries for their farms and families. To promote this disposition to exchange
lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries which we have to spare 
and they want,we shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good and 
influencial individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these 
debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off 
by cession of lands...In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and 
approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens 
of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi.The former is certainly the 
termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course 
of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that
our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to 
shut our hand to crush them..."
(Classified Letter of President Thomas Jefferson ("libertarian"--for propertied white
people) to William Henry Harrison, Feb. 27, 1803)

*My Employer  has no association with My Private and Protected Opinion*

[PEN-L:767] Re: Re: query: Alan Greenspan

[James Devine]

thanks, Doug! (I sort of knew you would come through. I almost ended my
missive with "thanks ahead of time, Doug")

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

[PEN-L:762] Re: query: Alan Greenspan

[Doug Henwood]

James Devine wrote:

>does anyone know when (and where) Alan Greenspan suggested that low
>inflation in the U.S. could be attributed to increased worker economic
>insecurity despite falling unemployment rates? who were the main critics of
>this theory and where did they write?

Greenspan to the JEC, June 10, 1998:

>In the first few years of the expansion, the subdued rate of rise in
>hourly compensation seemed to be, in part, a reflection of greater
>concerns among workers about job security. We now seem to have moved
>beyond that period of especially acute concern, though the flux of
>technology may still leave many workers with fears of job skill
>obsolescence and a willingness to trade wage gains for job security.
>This may explain why, despite the recent acceleration of wages, the
>resulting level of compensation has fallen short of what the experience
>of previous expansions would have led us to anticipate given the current
>degree of labor market tightness. In the past couple of years, of
>course, workers have not had to press especially hard for nominal pay
>gains to realize sizable increases in their real wages. In contrast to
>the pattern that developed in several previous business expansions, when
>workers required substantial increases in pay just to cover increases in
>the cost of living, consumer prices have been generally well-behaved in
>the current expansion. Changes this past year in prices of both goods
>and services have been among the smallest of recent decades.

Greenspan to the House Banking Committe, July 21, 1998:

>For one thing, increases in hourly compensation have been slower to pick
>up than in most other recent expansions, although, to be sure, wages
>have started to accelerate in the past couple of years as the labor
>market has become progressively tighter. In the first few years of the
>expansion, the subdued rate of rise in hourly compensation seemed to be,
>in part, a reflection of greater concerns among workers about job
>security. We now seem to have moved beyond that phase of especially
>acute concern, though the flux of technology may still be leaving many
>workers with fears of job skill obsolescence and a willingness to trade
>wage gains for job security. In the past couple of years, of course,
>workers have not had to press especially hard for nominal pay gains to
>realize sizable increases in their real wages. In contrast to the
>pattern that developed in several previous business expansions, when
>workers required substantial increases in pay just to cover increases in
>the cost of living, consumer prices have been generally well-behaved in
>the current expansion.


You can read AG talking about this in the present tense rather than the
past by paging through his testimonly collected at the Fed's website,
.

By the way, Laurence Meyer has turned out to be very hawkish. Isn't he some
sort of Keynesian?

Doug

[PEN-L:761] Peasant Farming Sucks ???

[michael]

One of my first acts in Chico was to organize a food buying co-op direct
from farmers.  After that we set up community gardens.  They were fun.
Even capitalist families read Martha Stewart to learn the joys of
gardening.

Peasant farming sucks because of the situation in which peasants farm.
Working in the community gardens, you could have every bit as fine a
conversation as in a coffee shop.  Bracero work or peasant farming sucks
because the people who do it are denied the proper resources, cultural or
human, as well as technical.

Peasant farming sucks.  When Jerry Brown was governor, I was invited to
give some advice about an army base that was closing in a rural area.  The
question was what could be done to revitalize the locale.

My advice was to build a college.  A good one.  Not some stripped down
Junior College.  Give the community the same cultural resources that the
city has -- just like Castro tries to do in Cuba.

Peasant farming sucks.  So does factory work and secretarial work.  So
does teaching when the bureaucracy becomes too heavy.

Peasant farming sucks.  No. Capitalism sucks.  The peasants at the bottom
of the heap feel the brunt of it.
 -- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:758] query: Alan Greenspan

[James Devine]

does anyone know when (and where) Alan Greenspan suggested that low
inflation in the U.S. could be attributed to increased worker economic
insecurity despite falling unemployment rates? who were the main critics of
this theory and where did they write?

thanks ahead of time,

in pen-l solidarity,

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

[PEN-L:757] Re: Re: re Bhoddi vs Proyect

[James Devine]

Eugene Coyle writes: 
>One of the earliest environmental pieces is by Oliver Goldsmith about the
>expropriation of another commons:
>
>fromThe Deserted Village

(snip)

This connection between the capitalism vs. the Indians discussion and the
"deserted village" (the abandoned English countryside) tells me that we
should link the former to Marx's discussion of primitive accumulation in
England, at the end of CAPITAL, vol. I. The Indians, that is, are receiving
the bloody brunt of primitive accumulation (PA). Unless, of course, they
fight back with Indian bingo or whatever. 

One thing that's noticeable about Marx's discussion is that he's shed the
technological-determinist approach of some of his earlier works ("handmill
gives you feudalism," yadda yadda) and that "the enlightened one" seems to
cling to. In desperate brevity, PA is a political movement that sets off an
economic movement. 

Thus, the possibility exists for a counter-PA political movement that
unifies the Indians with the urban working class, pressuring the state from
below to fight not only PA but the normal exploitative accumulation that
characterizes capitalism. Maybe something like that is happening in Brazil
with the Workers Party. (I'm afraid that one of Louis' many missives may
have had information about this but I forgot it or never read it because
there were so many.) 

I wish boddhi ("the enlightened one") would give up his
extremely-irritating pretensions and meditate on Socrates' dictum that "all
I know is that I know nothing" for awhile. Even better, he could start
using a pseudonym on pen-l, such as "Kevin."

in pen-l solidarity,

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

[PEN-L:753] Re: Re: Re: Sociologists and others who lie

[James Michael Craven]

On 11 Aug 98 at 12:31, Michael Perelman wrote:

> Am I the only one who sees a distinction between Leo, investigating police
> interrogation methods, and Ellis, taking advantage of people who are not harming
> anyone else?  How about the Greenpeace person who infiltrated the fishing fleet or
> the reporters investigating Food Lion?
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
> 
> Tel. 916-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
Precisely so. The real question is which side are you on and for whom 
are covert techniques used more than the techniques used per se. but, 
if I may, let me pose another question: What would have happened if 
the journalists who investigated  Food Lion (a marginal player in the 
grocery business) had investigated Safeway or some major players? And 
further, what would have happened if the journalists had suggested 
that the practices and conditions noted flowed inexorably from the 
inner and defining total-cost-minimizing-total-profit-and 
market-share maximizing logic of capitalism and that those practices 
and conditions were but the tip of an  inceberg looming increasing 
dangerous and destructive with the progressive ripening of 
capitalism?

Those journalists, had they managed to slip through the 
paradigm-screening in the hiring process would have never been on 
prime time and/or been summarily fired. Exposes can be used to 
cover-up as well as to expose. They create the illusion that 
something tangible can be done within the parameters and structures 
of the system itself rather than the practices and conditions being 
inexorable outcomes of the inner logic and defining structures of the 
system.

For "mainstream" academics as well as journalists, there is no need 
for master controllers approving/disapproving each and every journal 
article or expose. The rules, constraints, imperatives of suvival and 
success within the system are well understood: If you pose only 
acceptable questions or provide acceptable exposes or work on 
acceptable topics within acceptable paradigms you get preferred 
access (to "newsmakers, "respectable" journals, grants, insiders etc) 
which will yield the "big scoop" or the "big grant/prpject" which 
will yield more widespread exposure which will yield name recognition 
and "respectability" which will yield even more preferred access 
which will yield... In other words, the spiral of SUCKcess in 
mainstream academia and the media. Since the system and the 
powers-that-be require the illusion of the possibility of reform, one 
may even be drafted for the role of "respectable" muckraker or 
iconoclastic academic--heterodox (what a nice, sterile and almost 
respectable title). But don't go too far and don't pose the really 
deep and penetrating questions--then you go from being an Edward R. 
Murrow to being an I.F. Stone etc...

Jim Craven

 James Craven 
 Dept. of Economics,Clark College
 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Tel: (360) 992-2283 Fax: 992-2863
--
"The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards Indians; their land and 
property shall never be taken from them without their consent." 
(Northwest Ordinance, 1787, Ratified by Congress 1789)

"...but this letter being unofficial and private, I may with safety give you a more
 extensive view of our policy respecting the Indians, that you may better comprehend 
the parts dealt to to you in detail through the official channel, and observing the 
system of which they make a part, conduct yourself in unison with it in cases where 
you are obliged to act without instruction...When they withdraw themselves to the 
culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are their 
extensive forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in exchange 
for necessaries for their farms and families. To promote this disposition to exchange
lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries which we have to spare 
and they want,we shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good and 
influencial individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these 
debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off 
by cession of lands...In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and 
approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens 
of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi.The former is certainly the 
termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course 
of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that
our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to 
shut our hand to crush them..."
(Classified Letter of President Thomas Jefferson ("libertarian"--for propertied wh

[PEN-L:752] Re: re Bhoddi vs Proyect

[Eugene P. Coyle]

Paul Phillips wrote

>It seems to me that lost in the invective of this debate is some
>of the history of the 'expropriation of the aboriginal commons', at
>least as I understand it in the NA context.
>

One of the earliest environmental pieces is by Oliver Goldsmith about the
expropriation of another commons:

fromThe Deserted Village

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
 Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen,
 And desolation saddens all thy green:
 One only master grasps the whole domain,
 And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain:
 No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
 But chok'd with sedges, works its weedy way.
 Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
The hollowsounding bittern guards its nest;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.
 Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
 And the long grass o'ertops the mould'ring wall;
 And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,
 Far, far away, thy children leave the land.

Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey,
 Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
 Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.

Gene Coyle

[PEN-L:747] Re: Sociologists and others who lie

[Louis Proyect]

(This is the article I sent Jim Craven privately and to which he just
referred to publicly on PEN-L)

SPIES LIKE US 

WHEN SOCIOLOGISTS DECEIVE THEIR SUBJECTS

By CHARLOTTE ALLEN 

THEY CALL THEMSELVES GUINEAMEN. For more than two hundred years, they and
their forebears have fished, hunted, raised livestock on, and otherwise
made their living from a broad peninsula of marshland in a corner of the
Virginia tidewater region, where the York River meets the Chesapeake Bay.
Although many Guineamen now work outside the peninsula, a large number
still ply the traditional Chesapeake waterman's trade, generating a
distinctive local culture centered around the outboard skiff, Ford pickup,
rubber wading boots, snap-brim cap, and plug of tobacco.

When I visited them one afternoon this past summer, members of two Guinea
families were sitting in the yard in front of their trailer homes. When I
explained to them why I was there, they began jeering and trading jibes.
The target of their mockery was not another local but Carolyn Ellis, a
sociologist at the University of South Florida, whose prizewinning 1986
book about the Guineamen, Fisher Folk (Kentucky), transformed her in their
eyes from a beloved outsider and frequent guest into a traitor.

For nine years, from 1972 (when she was an undergraduate at the nearby
College of William and Mary) to 1981 (when she completed her doctoral
dissertation at SUNY Stony Brook), Ellis spent her weekends and summers
researching a "kinship network" among a particular group of Guinea
watermen. Her theory was that the Guineamen lacked the external social
mechanisms--strong churches, economic cooperation, a sense of community
beyond the extended family--necessary for them to prosper. The conclusions
of the book were not flattering to the region, which already had a
reputation for white-trash backwardness and marshland criminality.

In her writing, Ellis used pseudonyms to conceal her subjects'
identities--a standard practice in sociology. Guinea became "Fishneck," and
members of the local families she described were given plausible-sounding
made-up names. But that didn't stop her words from causing hurt. Ellis's
"Fishneckers" were often illiterate, obese, poorly dressed, and ignorant of
basic hygiene. "Scarcity of plumbing meant baths were infrequent," she
wrote. "That combined with everyday work with fish produced a
characteristic fishy body odor, identified by outsiders as the 'Fishneck
smell.'" What most riled the fishing families who had taken Ellis into
their homes, fed her meals, and let her stay over on many nights, however,
was that she never once let on that she was using them for sociological
research. "I thought she was nice," fumes one Guinea woman whose family
hosted Ellis often over the years. "But she turned out to be a liar." 

SOCIOLOGISTS have argued over the propriety of deceptive research for
decades. But in 1995, the debate took a decidedly heated turn. In April of
that year, Ellis published a remorseful essay in the Journal of
Contemporary Ethnography enumerating the ways she had deceived her
subjects. And her essay, which provoked much discussion among her
colleagues, was not the only controversial confession that year: The
American Sociologist published a far less remorseful account by a
sociologist who some felt had used deceptive techniques to research police
interrogation procedures. Finally, this spring, after two years of raging
debate on the topic, the American Sociological Association (ASA) approved a
set of stringent new ethics guidelines for professional conduct 

 More starkly than ever before, these events illustrate the  degree to
which the profession is caught in an uneasy bind  between fulfilling
research objectives and honoring ethical  obligations. Sociological
deception can take many forms,  some more subtle than others, but all
equally entangled in  moral dilemmas: A researcher might not tell his
subjects that he is using them for research purposes; or he might
misrepresent the motives of his research; or he might violate a pledge to
keep the identities of his subjects fully anonymous. In recent decades,
researchers have practiced these forms of deception, and each has been
earnestly defended and attacked within the profession. Ellis's behavior, it
turns out, was unusual but not unique; in some ways, her deception was
simply easier to see because--as she herself admitted--it was so blatant. 

ACCORDING to her confession in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography,
Ellis secretly tape-recorded conversations with her Fishneck subjects,
eavesdropped on their small talk, and coaxed data out of them while
pretending to be visiting socially or doing favors, such as writing
letters, baby-sitting, and driving them to doctor's appointments.
"Initially, I told a number of the Fishneckers who knew I was a college
student that I was writing a paper on fishing," she writes. As the years
passed, nearly everyone forgot about the college connection, until finall

[PEN-L:746] Sociologists and others who lie

[James Michael Craven]

Thanks to Louis for publishing that piece. It reminds me of 
journalists who scream "But what about the people's right to know?" 
when someone being questioned refuses to answer. Translation: "But 
what about MY need for a 'scoop' so that I can get more exposure, so 
that I can get name recognition and become a Dan Rather so that I can get preferred 
access 
from the powers-that-be, so that I can get an even bigger 'scoop'..." 
Or in the cases discussed in the article, we have "what about 
objectivity in research?" Translation: "What about MY need to produce 
something for a dissertation (and given time and financial resources 
and my need for respectability in the mainstream of the profession 
gaining confidence of those being researched through honesty and 
concretely linking up with their struggles and making them my 
struggles is not viable) in order to get my degree in order to build 
my CV, in order to score my job in academia, in order to get tenure, 
in order to become one of the powers-that-be in the profession...)

All sorts of opportunism are dressed up in "holy causes" like 
scientific progress, objectivity, people's right to know, etc. And 
that leads back to Gil Skillman's question about how many "radical" 
economists are there and to the more fundamental question "what does 
it mean to be a radical"? Speaking only for myself, a true radical 
has picked sides--the side of the oppressed. A true radical would 
never see people in misery and struggle as reified objects to be used 
and summarily dumped once the "research" is done. A true radical 
would never need to use covert means among the struggles of the  oppressed 
because he/she would clearly be part of those struggles and known by 
those involved to be so. A true radical would never be concerned 
about respectability and acceptance by the mainstream and 
establishment of the "profession" since their "research" and 
paradigms are supporting the systems the radical is dedicated to 
quesiton and help overthrow. A true radical when faced with the 
conflict between CV-building and acceptability in the "respectable" 
journals and media versus effectiveness in struggle and telling the 
truth as he/she truly believes it, would opt for the latter at all 
costs. A true radical is not a tourist or an outsider to struggles 
of the oppressed  but rather an integral part and weapon of those 
struggles. A true radical would be more concerned with producing 
research that is understandable and usable to those involved in 
concrete struggles than with esoteric language and methodologies 
designed to gain acceptability and respectability among those who use 
reified categories and methodologies to obscure, mystify and maintain 
status quo ante. A true radical apologizes to no one for his/her 
"biases" and having "chosen sides" and doesn't give a wit for debate 
with those who are simply hiding their biases and sycophancy under 
the banners of "objectivity" and "value-free". A true radical does 
not admit even the possibility of any favorable side of  or arguments for
racism, sexism, fascism, imperialism etc and does not waste time 
debating those seeking "objective" or "balanced" debates--pro and 
con--on those subjects as time is short and can be best spent 
elsewhere. Of course that is only one person's opinion.

The use of deceptive practices in academia can be even more damaging 
beyond deception of the subjects or objects of research being 
deceived. In the early 1970s and the University of Manitboa there was 
a researcher named Arnold Zubeck. He did all sorts of 
sensory-deprivation experiments and had a whole secure floor of the 
Psych-Zoo Building. Students were given credits for participating in 
his experiments. A graduate student of his, in a casual conversation, 
unwittingly let it out that Zubeck was also doing some Microwave 
experiments inspired by work of the French CRS on use of microwaves 
for mass crowd control (possibility of jamming synapses of large 
numbers of people leaving them like the chickens near a microwave 
tower in France than inspired the orginal work--laying on the ground 
unable to coordinate their movements). Some research on Zubeck's 
background showed that his Ph.D was in the History of Psychology (not 
exactly sterling research credentials in the areas in which he was 
working) and further research yielded information that he was being 
funded by the Defense Research Board of Canada, the U.S. Army, the 
British Army and some other interesting sources.

The British Government released a report called the "Compton Report" 
on interrogation techniques used by the British in Northern Island 
and on the effectiveness of sensory-deprivation and other torture 
techniques used by the British and in the report, cited as having 
provided the theoretical foundations, was reference to Zubeck's 
work--over and over. There was a student uprising about Zubeck's work 
(I was involved in it personally) and with the exposure of his wo

[PEN-L:743] Re: Saving Private Ryan

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

 I have not yet seen SPR (and my Russian wife finds the 
idea ludicrous given all the Soviet war movies she's seen 
and the historical reality lying behind them), so I might 
not for awhile.  In any case, Sunday's Washington Post had 
an article in the Style section (forget the author) who 
claimed that SPR is a _conservative_ movie (partly in 
response to some conservatives who have criticized it). The 
article's author notes that the doubting intellectual 
character is almost always wrong about things and that the 
heroes are the most unquestioning "let's follow orders" 
types.  So, loyalty, obedience, patriotism are praised; 
what else is missing?
 BTW, as this is my first post to this list, for 
anybody who hasn't encountered me before here in 
cyberspace, I am a professor of economics at James Madison 
University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA.  Long ago and 
far away this list's owner and I used to have terrible 
flame wars.  But we declared peace some time ago and it has 
by and large held since then.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 11 Aug 1998 10:42:26 -0400 Louis Proyect 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The only thing surprising about "Saving Private Ryan" is how conventional
> it is. I fully expected a much more "noir" vision of WWII along the lines
> of Oliver Stone's "Platoon." What I saw was an updated version of such
> 1950s classics as "Walk in the Sun," written by Robert Rossen, the CP'er
> who named names.
> 
> "Walk in the Sun," also known as "Salerno Beachhead," just about defines
> this genre. A group of GI's are out on a patrol and they get killed off one
> by one. The enemy is faceless and evil. Our soldiers, by the same token,
> are good boys who are just trying to get home. The reason that CP'ers were
> so adept at turning out this sort of patriotic pap is that they had bought
> into the myth of FDR's "fight for freedom." So patriotic were the CP'ers
> that they also backed the decision to intern Japanese-Americans.
> 
> The buzz about Spielberg's movie is clearly related to his decision to make
> battle wounds much more graphic than ever before. This decision roughly
> parallels the breakthrough made by Bertolucci in "Last Tango in Paris" to
> depict sexuality openly and honestly. The question of what is more
> jarring--Brando in full-frontal nudity or a soldier's intestines spilling
> out of his midsection--I will leave to others.
> 
> A war movie ultimately relies on the same dramatic tensions as slasher or
> science-fiction movies. The audience is at the edge of its seat waiting for
> the next sniper's bullet to tear through the flesh of one of the "good
> guys." The suspense is similar to that which awaits us for the next moment
> when "Halloween's" Jason will come barreling out of a closet with a kitchen
> knife in hand. Who will get slashed in the throat next? The most
> interesting variation on this theme is the film "Aliens" which blends
> monsters from outer space and "Walk in the Sun" war movie conventions. The
> acid-spitting  monsters of this film are stand-ins for Nazis or Japs. All
> the soldiers want to do is complete "their job" successfully and return
> home, in this case planet Earth.
> 
> Since the aesthetic dimensions of "Saving Private Ryan" are so
> underwhelming, the more interesting question becomes one of Steven
> Spielberg's motivation in turning out such a retro movie. What would compel
> a director working in 1998 to recycle themes from the immediate post-WWII
> period?
> 
> It is not really too hard to figure out. When Spielberg is not turning out
> escapist fantasies like the lovely "ET" or "Close Encounters of the Third
> Kind," he is functioning as a latter-day Frank Capra spinning out morality
> tales to mold public opinion.
> 
> Movies like "Amistad," "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" all
> basically put forward the same message, namely that the wealthy and the
> powerful are the ultimate guardians of what's decent and humane. In
> "Amistad," this role is assigned to John Quincy Adams who stands up for the
> slaves. In "Schindler's List," it is the industrialist who delivers the Jews.
> 
> General George Marshall, while a secondary character in "Saving Private
> Ryan," puts the dramatic narrative into motion through his decent and
> humane decision to remove Private James Ryan from the battlefield after his
> three brothers have been killed in action. Marshall tells his fellow
> officers that he didn't want to be in the same situation that faced Lincoln
> when he informed a mother that all of her sons had been killed in Civil War
> fighting.
> 
> Once this decision is reached, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and a group of
> soldiers are sent on their way to track down Private Ryan and send him back
> home. Their trek through hostile territory is familiar territory to anybody
> who has sat through the 1950s classics. Unfortunately, "Saving Private
> Ryan" does not even achieve the level of character development of a film
> like "Walk in the Sun

[PEN-L:742] Re: Tobacco

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

 There is a famous paper from the late 1940s by Radford 
on how cigarettes emerged spontaneously as a medium of 
exchange in prisoner-of-war camps in WW II.  Apparently 
they similarly function in most jails and prisons.
 Anyway, under ancien regime in the Soviet bloc certain 
US cigarette brands functioned similarly also.  There was a 
period of time when Kent cigarettes played this role in 
Romania.  It was always known that for an American visitor 
to the USSR it was wise to take along a carton of Marlboros 
and some panty hose to use for getting small favors done.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 11 Aug 1998 13:01:53 -0400 Louis Proyect 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> >Today's Financial Times has an article on how Eastern European are taking
> >up American smokes. Of course the marketing prowess of U.S. tobacco has a
> >lot to do with this, not to mention the "mystique" of America. But, why'd
> >so many Eastern Europeans smoke in the days when there was no advertising?
> >
> >Doug
> 
> Probably for the same reason so many Russians abused vodka. If you were
> living in a society that you had no control over, lived in oppressively
> monotonous housing, had no chance of material improvement, wouldn't you
> take advantage of every little "kick" that came along?
> 
> 
> 
> Louis Proyect
> 
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:738] Tobacco

[Louis Proyect]

>Today's Financial Times has an article on how Eastern European are taking
>up American smokes. Of course the marketing prowess of U.S. tobacco has a
>lot to do with this, not to mention the "mystique" of America. But, why'd
>so many Eastern Europeans smoke in the days when there was no advertising?
>
>Doug

Probably for the same reason so many Russians abused vodka. If you were
living in a society that you had no control over, lived in oppressively
monotonous housing, had no chance of material improvement, wouldn't you
take advantage of every little "kick" that came along?



Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)

[PEN-L:737] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Preference Formation

[Doug Henwood]

William S. Lear wrote:

>On Mon, August 10, 1998 at 15:14:11 (-0700) Ellen Dannin writes:
>>...In addition, the US
>>has periodically used its trade policies to force other countries to import
>>certain quotas of US cigarettes in exchange for trade agreements.
>
>You are being too charitable.  It wasn't "in exchange for trade
>agreements", it was in exchange for not being attacked economically
>with sanctions of various sorts.  C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon
>General, spoke out eloquently before Congress and elsewhere against
>this cowardly maneuver.

Today's Financial Times has an article on how Eastern European are taking
up American smokes. Of course the marketing prowess of U.S. tobacco has a
lot to do with this, not to mention the "mystique" of America. But, why'd
so many Eastern Europeans smoke in the days when there was no advertising?

Doug

[PEN-L:731] Saving Private Ryan

[Louis Proyect]

The only thing surprising about "Saving Private Ryan" is how conventional
it is. I fully expected a much more "noir" vision of WWII along the lines
of Oliver Stone's "Platoon." What I saw was an updated version of such
1950s classics as "Walk in the Sun," written by Robert Rossen, the CP'er
who named names.

"Walk in the Sun," also known as "Salerno Beachhead," just about defines
this genre. A group of GI's are out on a patrol and they get killed off one
by one. The enemy is faceless and evil. Our soldiers, by the same token,
are good boys who are just trying to get home. The reason that CP'ers were
so adept at turning out this sort of patriotic pap is that they had bought
into the myth of FDR's "fight for freedom." So patriotic were the CP'ers
that they also backed the decision to intern Japanese-Americans.

The buzz about Spielberg's movie is clearly related to his decision to make
battle wounds much more graphic than ever before. This decision roughly
parallels the breakthrough made by Bertolucci in "Last Tango in Paris" to
depict sexuality openly and honestly. The question of what is more
jarring--Brando in full-frontal nudity or a soldier's intestines spilling
out of his midsection--I will leave to others.

A war movie ultimately relies on the same dramatic tensions as slasher or
science-fiction movies. The audience is at the edge of its seat waiting for
the next sniper's bullet to tear through the flesh of one of the "good
guys." The suspense is similar to that which awaits us for the next moment
when "Halloween's" Jason will come barreling out of a closet with a kitchen
knife in hand. Who will get slashed in the throat next? The most
interesting variation on this theme is the film "Aliens" which blends
monsters from outer space and "Walk in the Sun" war movie conventions. The
acid-spitting  monsters of this film are stand-ins for Nazis or Japs. All
the soldiers want to do is complete "their job" successfully and return
home, in this case planet Earth.

Since the aesthetic dimensions of "Saving Private Ryan" are so
underwhelming, the more interesting question becomes one of Steven
Spielberg's motivation in turning out such a retro movie. What would compel
a director working in 1998 to recycle themes from the immediate post-WWII
period?

It is not really too hard to figure out. When Spielberg is not turning out
escapist fantasies like the lovely "ET" or "Close Encounters of the Third
Kind," he is functioning as a latter-day Frank Capra spinning out morality
tales to mold public opinion.

Movies like "Amistad," "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" all
basically put forward the same message, namely that the wealthy and the
powerful are the ultimate guardians of what's decent and humane. In
"Amistad," this role is assigned to John Quincy Adams who stands up for the
slaves. In "Schindler's List," it is the industrialist who delivers the Jews.

General George Marshall, while a secondary character in "Saving Private
Ryan," puts the dramatic narrative into motion through his decent and
humane decision to remove Private James Ryan from the battlefield after his
three brothers have been killed in action. Marshall tells his fellow
officers that he didn't want to be in the same situation that faced Lincoln
when he informed a mother that all of her sons had been killed in Civil War
fighting.

Once this decision is reached, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and a group of
soldiers are sent on their way to track down Private Ryan and send him back
home. Their trek through hostile territory is familiar territory to anybody
who has sat through the 1950s classics. Unfortunately, "Saving Private
Ryan" does not even achieve the level of character development of a film
like "Walk in the Sun." The stories about life back home are much more
interesting in Rossen's screenplay. This should not come as any great
surprise because the Hollywood Reds were some of the most accomplished
writers ever to work in tinseltown.

Standing above this film like a canopy are a whole set of assumptions about
American "decency." Not only is General George Marshall decent enough to
rescue a single GI from the fighting, the GI's themselves are also more
decent than the despicable Nazis. There is one plot device that drives this
point home. Hank's men have captured a German soldier. They want to kill
him but Hanks says that this would not be right and sends him off. In the
climax of the film, this soldier turns up again and plunges a knife into
one of the "good guys" in hand-to-hand combat. After he is captured once
again, a GI shoots him in cold blood. The moral of the story is that it is
forgivable to shoot Germans in this manner because they are embodiments of
pure evil, just as they were in "Schindler's Tale,"

There is no doubt that Spielberg decided to make such a patriotic movie
because he is concerned about the widespread erosion of confidence in
elected officials in American society. Warren Beatty, another Hollywood
mover-and-shaker,