[PEN-L:3145] Re: Nigeria <3.0.1.32.19990209114420.0073b78c@popserver.panix.com>

[Ken Hanly]

You don't  believe that capitalism has progressive aspects? I thought you were a
Marxist?
How can you hold both that capitalism has no progressive aspects and that you
are a Marxist at one and the same time? THere are numerous passages in  Marx
filled with praises of capitalism's progressive features, of the manner in which
it releases the productive forces of nature and frees people from feudal bonds.
..

  CHeers , Ken Hanly

Louis Proyect wrote:

> Doug:
> >Seeing the world in black and white makes writing polemic a lot easier, but
> >it's not very helpful. I was reacting to your preposterous claim that
> >Nigeria has seen "plenty of investment," which is why the phrase was in
> >quotes. Nigeria has not had "plenty of investment," it's had too little and
> >of a very distorted sort. Here's the full exchange. I especially like the
> >way you forgot to quote the "It's been plundered" part.
>
> Doug, we have political differences that no amount of quoting in context or
> out of context will change. You believe that capitalism has some
> progressive aspects, while I believe that it has none. That is what the
> debate is about.
>
> Louis Proyect
>
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)

[PEN-L:3142] Re: Re: Aztecs

[Ken Hanly]

Actually Blake was referring to Roman Catholic Churches when he spoke of the
dark
"satanic mills", not industrial plants. However, the phrase is now so commonly
used
in the way you use it, that it really doesn't make much difference.
Cheers, Ken Hanly

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> At 02:33 PM 2/9/99 -0500, Lou wrote:
> >The actual historical record is that peasants in what Michael calls
> >"self-provisioning" economies resisted proletarianization with all the
> >force they can muster. It was normal for peasants in the 17th century to
> >have the skills and raw materials to fashion their own shoes, for example.
>
> If memory serves, that is what A.V. Chayanov argues re. Eastern Europe in
> _The Theory of Peasanr Economy_ (Madison 1986).
>
> But there is a big difference betwenn the 18th century "satanic mills" and
> the 20th century maquilladoras.  The later are certainly horrible if
> compared to, say, Western European factories, but they may offer advantages
> to people who want to flee the "rural idiocy."
>
> I often meet Polish immigrants, esp. women, who preferred to stay in the US
> where they working and living conditions were substantially below what they
> had left in the socialist Poland.  However, the slums of New York, Chicago
> or Boston offer these women what they did not have under Eastern European
> rural patriarchy: the freedom to earn and spend their meager income as they
> wanted, go where they wanted, dress as they wanted, sleep with whom they
> wanted, and not being asked to sacrifice for the "holy family" (read: their
> stinking and drunken husbands).
>
> Regards,
>
> Wojtek

[PEN-L:3140] Investment in the third world

[Louis Proyect]

Pierre Jalée, "The Pillage of the Third World," (Monthly Review), pp 76-83:

Nevertheless, there are many well-meaning people, both in the imperialist
countries and the Third World, who still have illusions as to the
usefulness of private investment in the underdeveloped countries.

It is simple to make the following calculation: a foreign private
enterprise sets up in a Third World country where it makes a regular,
yearly profit of 10 percent on its investment. If the whole of these
profits are transferred abroad, at the end of the tenth year an amount
equal to the original investment will have been exported. From the eleventh
year onwards, the receiving country will be exporting currency which it has
not received; in twenty years it will have exported twice as much, etc. If
the rate of profit is 20 percent instead of 10 percent the outflow will
begin twice as early. If only half the profits are exported the process
will be only half as rapid. This example is a somewhat oversimplified
hypothesis, but reflects reality. There is no end to the loss through such
outflows, except nationalization or socialization of the enterprises.

Pierre Moussa gives a more complicated example:

"Outpayments derived directly from the investment are greatest for
enterprises in those branches of industry requiring a heavy capital outlay.
Thus the great projects in Africa South of the Sahara . . . call for
investments whose total is several times greater than the net output (from
2.5 to almost 7 times greater and usually 3 to 5 times greater). Suppose
that a project is financed one third by capital and two thirds by loans at,
say, 8 percent amortizable over 20 years; suppose that the capital is paid
for at 15 percent; it can be calculated that outpayments on the loan and
the capital over the first 20 years will exceed 10 percent of the
investment; if the latter is 3, 4, or 5 times greater than the output,
outpayments of financial origin alone will exceed 30 percent, 40 percent,
or 50 percent of this output.

"These facts give the underdeveloped countries the feeling of being
defrauded, and the impression that their natural wealth is being exploited
without leaving them much to show for it. In economic theory this situation
described by the term dualist, implying that the foreign enterprise within
underdeveloped country is like a modern oasis in the middle of a primitive
desert."

Unfortunately, this writer does not follow the argument through. It
deviates into proposals for the traditional palliative measures, retreats
to the point of suggesting that not too much attention should be paid to
the dualist thesis, and points out that what revenue is left the host
country is a direct increment, which will engender new secondary and then
tertiary revenue. I consider this to be a specious argument for there is no
reason to suppose that these additional revenues will not, in their turn,
be subject to deductions payable abroad.

It would be of great interest to know, even very broadly, what proportion
of the profits made by foreign enterprises in the Third World is actually
reinvested in the host countries. Accurate figures are not available except
that the World Bank report for 1965-1966 estimates that in 1965 transferred
profits from the underdeveloped countries amounted to $4 billion, and
profits reinvested to $840 million. Is it, however, to be expected that
detailed and accurate figures should exist? Figures dealing with trade and
production can regarded as firm data, beyond question except for small
marginal errors in the groupings used, hut one must exercise the greatest
reserve when it comes to the profits on the undertakings and private
investments of the imperialist countries in the Third World. In this
official statistics and public service records, however technically
correct, can only apply to the officially acknowledged portion of such
profits, which often bears only a distant relation to the whole.

More and more Third World countries have drawn up and brought into force
charters or codes for foreign investment. These set out to attract foreign
investment by tax, customs, or other concessions, but purport only to
reduce the amount of profit which can be transferred. Those foreign
capitalists interested in investing in the Third World have understood very
well how to take advantage of the benefits and are little worried by
restrictions on the retransfer of profits. For those who know best how to
extract all the benefits from the law when it is favorable, know best how
to get around it when it is not.

M. Moussa himself recalls the well-known fact that much of the revenue of
foreign enterprises in the Third World leaves the host country in the form
of salaries paid to foreign technicians and specialists, and above all as
payments for licenses and patents. Hamza Alavi adds to this list various
commissions, administrative charges and other "services." But Alavi
emphasizes the most essential point: "The greater part of surplu

[PEN-L:3137] long waves

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Tom,
 By "up" I meant an increase in growth rates.
Doug,
So, just out of curiosity, how does a comparison 
between 1975-95 with post 1995 look both globally and 
regionally, as I think you've got the numbers reasonably at 
hand?  I would guess that my forecasts about who is "up" 
and who is not will hold, although the socialist bloc will 
look very good for the early period compared to the late.  
I would think Latin America would look better in the 90s 
than in the 80s, although there are certainly plenty of 
blips there, such as Brazil right now.
 Also, although East Asia is doing badly, some parts of 
Asia have never done better, including the very important 
India, at least in terms of aggregate growth rates.
 Finally I would note that the figures would look 
better for the more recent period in per capita terms as 
world population growth has been decelerating.
Barkley Rosser

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:3141] Re: We are waiting

[William S. Lear]

On Tue, February 9, 1999 at 07:34:51 (-0500) Gerald Levy writes:
>...
>What PEN-L suffers from is not the absence of posts. Quite the reverse. It
>is not uncommon for daily digests to be over 500K. I would guestimate that
>digests have average over 250K in recent months. This is _way_ too large
>for subscribers to be expected to read, engage, and seriously participate
>in. (NB: a recent check revealed that there has been in recent months a
>approx 20% reduction in subscribers).

Daily average in January was about 125K.  The average number of posts
per day was about 27.

>So, the volume is too large.   
>
>Moreover, a lot of this volume is posted by just a few subscribers. For
>instance, it is not uncommon for individuals to post between 6-15 messages
>per day. It would seem that voluntary restraint (or if necessary a list
>requirement concerning the maximum # of posts/person/day) is needed.
>
>So, there are too many posts by too few subscribers.

Top 20 highest posters per day (approx. figures) were:

Average  Total Poster
   --  --
2.709680   84  Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2.032260   63  Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2.00   62  [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker)
1.709680   53  Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
1.612900   50  Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
1.064520   33  valis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
1.032260   32  "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.903226   28  "Henry C.K. Liu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.903226   28  "James Michael Craven" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.741935   23  Ken Hanly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.741935   23  Brad De Long <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.709677   22  Peter Dorman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.677419   21  "William S. Lear" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.645161   20  Richardson_D <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.548387   17  [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Max Sawicky)
0.451613   14  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
0.419355   13  Dennis R Redmond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.387097   12  rc&am <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.354839   11  Michael Yates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
0.354839   11  Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>Moreover, too much of the content of posts has nothing to do of relevance
>for a "Progressive Economists Network". In fact, I would hazard to
>estimate that on this "economists" list, a majority of posts are written
>by non-economists. 

As I am a non-economist, I'll have to disagree with your implication.

>E.g. (yes, I have raised this issue before but it was blithely ignored):
>why is there a "daily labor report" for the US sent to a list which is
>supposedly international? (but which is, in fact, overwhelmingly dominated
>by subscribers from the US and Canada). Isn't there *some other way* that
>those who want the report can be sent it without burdening the rest of
>us? (seriously, Dave: stop it!)

The daily labor report is highly relevant to progressive economics.
If you have information to add, please do so.

>Then there are all of those reprints from _The New York Times_. You call
>that "discussion"?

If you don't like what is being discussed, why don't you raise the
level and contribute something of value?  What would you like to
discuss?

>(Or long reprints from books without the author's permission and in
>violation of copyright laws).

Fair use.


Bill

[PEN-L:3143] Report from Black Mesa Labs

[Dennis R Redmond]

On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Max Sawicky wrote:

> Actually this pales next to the comprehensive discussion
> of Lesbian phalluses on Henwood's 'Libidinous-Business
> Observer' list.

That ain't the half of it. Wild whipping sessions, the crossing of 
the intergalactic divide from Starcluster Spandex to Planet Latex, and
other tales too ticklish to tell on this sober venue. Which explains why 
the Right hates the Left so much -- they have the funds, and we have the
fun. Of course, things got a little out of hand when they brought in the
cactus for the acupunture intermission. But I thought the videowall
running Gamespy sessions of Halflife was a nice touch.

-- The Saguaro Kid

[PEN-L:3135] Re: selling Manhattan

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Charles,
Aw, heck.  The Indians should tell the Europeans to go 
back where they came from. And I think that the Basques 
should tell all of those blankety blank Aryans to go back 
where they came from in Eurasia.  And, the Iroquois should 
tell the Algonkians to go back where they came from and...
 All I'm going to say about all those forceful folks.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 09 Feb 1999 17:12:27 -0500 Charles Brown 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> 
> >>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 4:46 PM >>>
> Charles,
>  Well, we're wearing this thin.  But, just to put it in 
> context:  I brought up the violent transfer of land control 
> between tribes to contrast it with the peaceful transfer 
> that occurred, at least initially, in some places such as 
> the "purchase" (however non-meeting of the minds) of land 
> by some Europeans from the Indians, e.g. the Dutch in 
> Manhatten, the English Quakers in Philadelphia, the 
> Russians in northern California.  I put those activities 
> forward as more admirable certainly than the usual outright 
> forcible theft by Europeans, and as certainly not worse 
> than the forcible seizure of land by one tribe from 
> another. 
> 
> 
> Charles: But I don't agree that you made this factual point. You asserted it, but 
>did not prove it.
> 
>  Many on this list, including you, denied any such 
> comparison, decrying all land transfers from Indians to 
> Europeans as equally invalid, illegimate, imperialistic, 
> and immoral.
> ___
> 
> Charles: Want to show me where I said this ? The Indians probaby didn't think of 
>them as "transfers". Even if peaceful, they didn't anticipate it as prelude to 
>massive invasion. 
> 
> Anyway, even if some Europeans were peaceful, ultimately the whole relationship was 
>by force. The determining occurrences as to how we got to where we are today were the 
>imperialistic takings. The few peaceful sharings do not validate the warlike takings. 
>Your effort to contrast European "peaceful" actions with Indian fighting is really 
>off and backward. All Europeans should feel uncomfortable about this history, and any 
>effort to lessen the European crime is a disservice.
> 
> 
> Charles Brown
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Barkley Rosser
> On Tue, 09 Feb 1999 16:32:40 -0500 Charles Brown 
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > >>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 4:02 PM >>>
> > Charles,
> >  I think you are still evading the issue here.  It is 
> > fine to argue that there was no conception of "private 
> > property in land" and also that there was no juridically 
> > defined "territory" because (at least in what is now the 
> > US) there were no "states."  But, are all those books one 
> > picks up that identify certain parts of North America with 
> > certain tribes some bogus "projection"? 
> > 
> > Charles: I'm not sure what you think is being evaded. Nothing in what I have said 
>contradicts tribes being in certain places. Remember what I said about "sacred spots" 
>? What I am saying would exactly predict that tribes would be located in a certain 
>place - by their specific "sacred spots." 
> > 
> > THE important thing in this discussion is they didn't have private property. 
>Private property is not panhuman. Communism is not a pipedream.
> > 
> > I long ago addressed your implied argument that if the Indians took land from each 
>other by force, then this justifies European taking from the takers. This is not a 
>valid argument. So, what even if there was less than a peaceful process (it wasn't a 
>"business") before European arrival, so what ? 
> > 
> > 
> > Barkley:
> > We know that in 
> > those zones were spots viewed as sacred by the tribes in 
> > question, some of them ancestral burial grounds.  Somehow 
> > it came about that certain tribes predominated in certain 
> > areas rather than others, with some zones being shared such 
> > as the collective hunting zone of West Virginia and the 
> > Shenandoah Valley.  The process of this was not always a 
> > peaceful business.
> > 
> > 
> > Charles: Ok but we are starting to go over the same thing again and again. Far 
>from evasion, I am giving the same logical and cogent answer to your same question 
>repeatedly. When you say "the process of this was not always a peaceful business" I 
>refer you to my previous posts. Fighting but not for "territory". And a different 
>order of magnitude in fighting than Europe. What is new in what you are saying here ? 
> > 
> > 
> > Barkley   
> >  BTW, it may be true that the ancestors of the Aztecs 
> > founded Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).  But from there they 
> > conquered and dominated the previous rulers of the central 
> > valley of Mexico, who operated from a different 
> > headquarters, just as those rulers had conquered and 
> > displaced as rulers the "Teotihuacaners" some time earlier 
> > who had their base at the pyramids about 30 miles north of 
> > modern Mexico 

[PEN-L:3138] Re: We are waiting

[Ken Hanly]

I always read the BLS reports even though I am a subscriber from Canada.. I
hope that
they are not removed from Pen-L. While it is true that at times Pen-L is high
volume, there is much that is of interest. As to the long posts not directly
related to economics, I have found
some of
them most intriguing and even sent some of them on to other people. This list
has never had a narrow focus on economics as long as I can recall. Of course
there are a great many non-economists on this list incuding myself. Are you
saying a purge is in order :) God, you are a pompous humourless person. Im
capable of pressing the delete button and do when a topic doesnt interest me.
When  Louis or Doug press your buttons  all this bile seems to be released.
Next time Ill press delete when I see your name.

Cheers, Ken Hanly

Gerald Levy wrote:

> Barkley writes -- imploring me to write more for PEN-L:
>
> > We are waiting.
>
> You will have to continue to wait.
>
> What PEN-L suffers from is not the absence of posts. Quite the reverse. It
> is not uncommon for daily digests to be over 500K. I would guestimate that
> digests have average over 250K in recent months. This is _way_ too large
> for subscribers to be expected to read, engage, and seriously participate
> in. (NB: a recent check revealed that there has been in recent months a
> approx 20% reduction in subscribers).
>
> So, the volume is too large.
>
> Moreover, a lot of this volume is posted by just a few subscribers. For
> instance, it is not uncommon for individuals to post between 6-15 messages
> per day. It would seem that voluntary restraint (or if necessary a list
> requirement concerning the maximum # of posts/person/day) is needed.
>
> So, there are too many posts by too few subscribers.
>
> Moreover, too much of the content of posts has nothing to do of relevance
> for a "Progressive Economists Network". In fact, I would hazard to
> estimate that on this "economists" list, a majority of posts are written
> by non-economists.
>
> There's way too much spam.
>
> E.g. (yes, I have raised this issue before but it was blithely ignored):
> why is there a "daily labor report" for the US sent to a list which is
> supposedly international? (but which is, in fact, overwhelmingly dominated
> by subscribers from the US and Canada). Isn't there *some other way* that
> those who want the report can be sent it without burdening the rest of
> us? (seriously, Dave: stop it!)
>
> Then there are all of those reprints from _The New York Times_. You call
> that "discussion"?
>
> (Or long reprints from books without the author's permission and in
> violation of copyright laws).
>
> So, it is I who am waiting.
>
> Waiting for PEN to *do something* about the above problems.
>
> Thank you for raising this topic, Barkley.
>
> Jerry

[PEN-L:3134] Re: selling Manhattan

[Charles Brown]

>>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 4:46 PM >>>
Charles,
 Well, we're wearing this thin.  But, just to put it in 
context:  I brought up the violent transfer of land control 
between tribes to contrast it with the peaceful transfer 
that occurred, at least initially, in some places such as 
the "purchase" (however non-meeting of the minds) of land 
by some Europeans from the Indians, e.g. the Dutch in 
Manhatten, the English Quakers in Philadelphia, the 
Russians in northern California.  I put those activities 
forward as more admirable certainly than the usual outright 
forcible theft by Europeans, and as certainly not worse 
than the forcible seizure of land by one tribe from 
another. 


Charles: But I don't agree that you made this factual point. You asserted it, but did 
not prove it.

 Many on this list, including you, denied any such 
comparison, decrying all land transfers from Indians to 
Europeans as equally invalid, illegimate, imperialistic, 
and immoral.
___

Charles: Want to show me where I said this ? The Indians probaby didn't think of them 
as "transfers". Even if peaceful, they didn't anticipate it as prelude to massive 
invasion. 

Anyway, even if some Europeans were peaceful, ultimately the whole relationship was by 
force. The determining occurrences as to how we got to where we are today were the 
imperialistic takings. The few peaceful sharings do not validate the warlike takings. 
Your effort to contrast European "peaceful" actions with Indian fighting is really off 
and backward. All Europeans should feel uncomfortable about this history, and any 
effort to lessen the European crime is a disservice.


Charles Brown




Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 09 Feb 1999 16:32:40 -0500 Charles Brown 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> 
> >>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 4:02 PM >>>
> Charles,
>  I think you are still evading the issue here.  It is 
> fine to argue that there was no conception of "private 
> property in land" and also that there was no juridically 
> defined "territory" because (at least in what is now the 
> US) there were no "states."  But, are all those books one 
> picks up that identify certain parts of North America with 
> certain tribes some bogus "projection"? 
> 
> Charles: I'm not sure what you think is being evaded. Nothing in what I have said 
>contradicts tribes being in certain places. Remember what I said about "sacred spots" 
>? What I am saying would exactly predict that tribes would be located in a certain 
>place - by their specific "sacred spots." 
> 
> THE important thing in this discussion is they didn't have private property. Private 
>property is not panhuman. Communism is not a pipedream.
> 
> I long ago addressed your implied argument that if the Indians took land from each 
>other by force, then this justifies European taking from the takers. This is not a 
>valid argument. So, what even if there was less than a peaceful process (it wasn't a 
>"business") before European arrival, so what ? 
> 
> 
> Barkley:
> We know that in 
> those zones were spots viewed as sacred by the tribes in 
> question, some of them ancestral burial grounds.  Somehow 
> it came about that certain tribes predominated in certain 
> areas rather than others, with some zones being shared such 
> as the collective hunting zone of West Virginia and the 
> Shenandoah Valley.  The process of this was not always a 
> peaceful business.
> 
> 
> Charles: Ok but we are starting to go over the same thing again and again. Far from 
>evasion, I am giving the same logical and cogent answer to your same question 
>repeatedly. When you say "the process of this was not always a peaceful business" I 
>refer you to my previous posts. Fighting but not for "territory". And a different 
>order of magnitude in fighting than Europe. What is new in what you are saying here ? 
> 
> 
> Barkley   
>  BTW, it may be true that the ancestors of the Aztecs 
> founded Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).  But from there they 
> conquered and dominated the previous rulers of the central 
> valley of Mexico, who operated from a different 
> headquarters, just as those rulers had conquered and 
> displaced as rulers the "Teotihuacaners" some time earlier 
> who had their base at the pyramids about 30 miles north of 
> modern Mexico City.  I note that the central valley of 
> Mexico has long been a major culture basin, as being near 
> the likely original site of the cultivation of maize (corn).
> 
> Charles: Yea, I think the Toltec were there before the Aztec. I mentioned 
>Teotihuacan in another post (or was that another list ?) pyramids of the sun and the 
>moon. I'm not sure the occupants of Teo  were conquered. I think it might be a 
>mystery still what happened to them. They have Maya settlements that just "went down" 
>and they don't know why yet.
> 
> Archeologist Kent Flannery (University of Michigan) argues that maize was invented 
>by pa

[PEN-L:3133] Re: Re: Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

Wojtek:
>If memory serves, that is what A.V. Chayanov argues re. Eastern Europe in
>_The Theory of Peasanr Economy_ (Madison 1986).
>
>But there is a big difference betwenn the 18th century "satanic mills" and
>the 20th century maquilladoras.  The later are certainly horrible if
>compared to, say, Western European factories, but they may offer advantages
>to people who want to flee the "rural idiocy."

I once told Heartfield that I have no objection to the Yanomami deciding to
shop at a 7-11 that's opened up in the heart of the Amazon instead of
hunting for their own food. But this is not what's happening. Instead gold
miners, oil companies and ranchers are shooting and poisoning them. By the
same token, if some young woman in Chiapas sees a tv news segment about
Juarez and runs off to get a job at a Toshiba plant, because she wants to
get away from an abusive father and be able to see male strippers, that's
okay also. But that's not what the radical movement in Mexico is up in arms
about. What is happening is that, under the tidal wave NAFTA represents,
vast numbers of peasants are losing their land. They then form a reserve
army of the unemployed that floods into places along the border to get jobs
that barely keep them alive. This is not about freedom, it is about the
economic vise of the marketplace.




Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3132] Re: Aztecs

[sokol]

At 02:33 PM 2/9/99 -0500, Lou wrote:
>The actual historical record is that peasants in what Michael calls
>"self-provisioning" economies resisted proletarianization with all the
>force they can muster. It was normal for peasants in the 17th century to
>have the skills and raw materials to fashion their own shoes, for example.

If memory serves, that is what A.V. Chayanov argues re. Eastern Europe in
_The Theory of Peasanr Economy_ (Madison 1986).

But there is a big difference betwenn the 18th century "satanic mills" and
the 20th century maquilladoras.  The later are certainly horrible if
compared to, say, Western European factories, but they may offer advantages
to people who want to flee the "rural idiocy."

I often meet Polish immigrants, esp. women, who preferred to stay in the US
where they working and living conditions were substantially below what they
had left in the socialist Poland.  However, the slums of New York, Chicago
or Boston offer these women what they did not have under Eastern European
rural patriarchy: the freedom to earn and spend their meager income as they
wanted, go where they wanted, dress as they wanted, sleep with whom they
wanted, and not being asked to sacrifice for the "holy family" (read: their
stinking and drunken husbands).

Regards,

Wojtek

[PEN-L:3131] Re: selling Manhattan

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Charles,
 Well, we're wearing this thin.  But, just to put it in 
context:  I brought up the violent transfer of land control 
between tribes to contrast it with the peaceful transfer 
that occurred, at least initially, in some places such as 
the "purchase" (however non-meeting of the minds) of land 
by some Europeans from the Indians, e.g. the Dutch in 
Manhatten, the English Quakers in Philadelphia, the 
Russians in northern California.  I put those activities 
forward as more admirable certainly than the usual outright 
forcible theft by Europeans, and as certainly not worse 
than the forcible seizure of land by one tribe from 
another.  Many on this list, including you, denied any such 
comparison, decrying all land transfers from Indians to 
Europeans as equally invalid, illegimate, imperialistic, 
and immoral.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 09 Feb 1999 16:32:40 -0500 Charles Brown 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> 
> >>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 4:02 PM >>>
> Charles,
>  I think you are still evading the issue here.  It is 
> fine to argue that there was no conception of "private 
> property in land" and also that there was no juridically 
> defined "territory" because (at least in what is now the 
> US) there were no "states."  But, are all those books one 
> picks up that identify certain parts of North America with 
> certain tribes some bogus "projection"? 
> 
> Charles: I'm not sure what you think is being evaded. Nothing in what I have said 
>contradicts tribes being in certain places. Remember what I said about "sacred spots" 
>? What I am saying would exactly predict that tribes would be located in a certain 
>place - by their specific "sacred spots." 
> 
> THE important thing in this discussion is they didn't have private property. Private 
>property is not panhuman. Communism is not a pipedream.
> 
> I long ago addressed your implied argument that if the Indians took land from each 
>other by force, then this justifies European taking from the takers. This is not a 
>valid argument. So, what even if there was less than a peaceful process (it wasn't a 
>"business") before European arrival, so what ? 
> 
> 
> Barkley:
> We know that in 
> those zones were spots viewed as sacred by the tribes in 
> question, some of them ancestral burial grounds.  Somehow 
> it came about that certain tribes predominated in certain 
> areas rather than others, with some zones being shared such 
> as the collective hunting zone of West Virginia and the 
> Shenandoah Valley.  The process of this was not always a 
> peaceful business.
> 
> 
> Charles: Ok but we are starting to go over the same thing again and again. Far from 
>evasion, I am giving the same logical and cogent answer to your same question 
>repeatedly. When you say "the process of this was not always a peaceful business" I 
>refer you to my previous posts. Fighting but not for "territory". And a different 
>order of magnitude in fighting than Europe. What is new in what you are saying here ? 
> 
> 
> Barkley   
>  BTW, it may be true that the ancestors of the Aztecs 
> founded Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).  But from there they 
> conquered and dominated the previous rulers of the central 
> valley of Mexico, who operated from a different 
> headquarters, just as those rulers had conquered and 
> displaced as rulers the "Teotihuacaners" some time earlier 
> who had their base at the pyramids about 30 miles north of 
> modern Mexico City.  I note that the central valley of 
> Mexico has long been a major culture basin, as being near 
> the likely original site of the cultivation of maize (corn).
> 
> Charles: Yea, I think the Toltec were there before the Aztec. I mentioned 
>Teotihuacan in another post (or was that another list ?) pyramids of the sun and the 
>moon. I'm not sure the occupants of Teo  were conquered. I think it might be a 
>mystery still what happened to them. They have Maya settlements that just "went down" 
>and they don't know why yet.
> 
> Archeologist Kent Flannery (University of Michigan) argues that maize was invented 
>by paleo-botanists. I think it was derived from teocintle (spelling) However, I think 
>that is like 200 BC or earlier.
> 
> Charles Brown
> 
> Barkley Rosser
> On Tue, 09 Feb 1999 13:55:01 -0500 Charles Brown 
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > >>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 1:22 PM >>>
> > Charles,
> > Well, I guess I'll add a bit more on this pre-European 
> > intertribal conflicts issue.  Again, of course, except for 
> > places like the central valley of Mexico where there are 
> > historical records, we only know about things that went on 
> > either after or just before the Europeans arrived in other 
> > places.  But I fear that conjuring an Edenic paradise where 
> > all the tribes lived in harmony with one another is yet 
> > another "projection," however lovely.
> > 
> > 
> > Charles: Of course, I didn't say tha

[PEN-L:3130] RE: Re: Re: RE: Re: Aztecs

[Max Sawicky]

.. . .
> production. The fact  (as I understand it) is that when the head Inca
> wasn't mobilizing tributary labor (with whips, Max, because I know that
> excites you) . . .

Actually this pales next to the comprehensive discussion
of Lesbian phalluses on Henwood's 'Libidinous-Business
Observer' list.

mbs

[PEN-L:3129] Re: selling Manhattan

[Charles Brown]

>>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 4:02 PM >>>
Charles,
 I think you are still evading the issue here.  It is 
fine to argue that there was no conception of "private 
property in land" and also that there was no juridically 
defined "territory" because (at least in what is now the 
US) there were no "states."  But, are all those books one 
picks up that identify certain parts of North America with 
certain tribes some bogus "projection"? 

Charles: I'm not sure what you think is being evaded. Nothing in what I have said 
contradicts tribes being in certain places. Remember what I said about "sacred spots" 
? What I am saying would exactly predict that tribes would be located in a certain 
place - by their specific "sacred spots." 

THE important thing in this discussion is they didn't have private property. Private 
property is not panhuman. Communism is not a pipedream.

I long ago addressed your implied argument that if the Indians took land from each 
other by force, then this justifies European taking from the takers. This is not a 
valid argument. So, what even if there was less than a peaceful process (it wasn't a 
"business") before European arrival, so what ? 


Barkley:
We know that in 
those zones were spots viewed as sacred by the tribes in 
question, some of them ancestral burial grounds.  Somehow 
it came about that certain tribes predominated in certain 
areas rather than others, with some zones being shared such 
as the collective hunting zone of West Virginia and the 
Shenandoah Valley.  The process of this was not always a 
peaceful business.


Charles: Ok but we are starting to go over the same thing again and again. Far from 
evasion, I am giving the same logical and cogent answer to your same question 
repeatedly. When you say "the process of this was not always a peaceful business" I 
refer you to my previous posts. Fighting but not for "territory". And a different 
order of magnitude in fighting than Europe. What is new in what you are saying here ? 


Barkley   
 BTW, it may be true that the ancestors of the Aztecs 
founded Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).  But from there they 
conquered and dominated the previous rulers of the central 
valley of Mexico, who operated from a different 
headquarters, just as those rulers had conquered and 
displaced as rulers the "Teotihuacaners" some time earlier 
who had their base at the pyramids about 30 miles north of 
modern Mexico City.  I note that the central valley of 
Mexico has long been a major culture basin, as being near 
the likely original site of the cultivation of maize (corn).

Charles: Yea, I think the Toltec were there before the Aztec. I mentioned Teotihuacan 
in another post (or was that another list ?) pyramids of the sun and the moon. I'm not 
sure the occupants of Teo  were conquered. I think it might be a mystery still what 
happened to them. They have Maya settlements that just "went down" and they don't know 
why yet.

Archeologist Kent Flannery (University of Michigan) argues that maize was invented by 
paleo-botanists. I think it was derived from teocintle (spelling) However, I think 
that is like 200 BC or earlier.

Charles Brown

Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 09 Feb 1999 13:55:01 -0500 Charles Brown 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> 
> >>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 1:22 PM >>>
> Charles,
> Well, I guess I'll add a bit more on this pre-European 
> intertribal conflicts issue.  Again, of course, except for 
> places like the central valley of Mexico where there are 
> historical records, we only know about things that went on 
> either after or just before the Europeans arrived in other 
> places.  But I fear that conjuring an Edenic paradise where 
> all the tribes lived in harmony with one another is yet 
> another "projection," however lovely.
> 
> 
> Charles: Of course, I didn't say that. I said there is evidence of fighting, but 
>there is also evidence of lack of private property and territory. There is 
>archaeological evidence too, of course. Also, there is an anthropological 
>generalization about modes of production, so that evidence from elsewhere , though 
>"projected", is more scientific than projecting a Hebrew Biblical myth ( although I 
>find it interesting that the Garden of Eden was a GARDEN , and horticulture is what 
>anthropology/archaeology has concluded was the mode of production which "fell out of 
>the Garden" with agriculture and civilization)
> ___
> 
> Barkley: 
>  Certainly there were lots of intertribal conflicts 
> that were triggered by the European colonists pushing 
> tribes west, as with the Chippewas pushing the Sioux out of 
> northern Wisconsin even before any Europeans got into that 
> area.  But a lot of other cases are less clear.
>  In the case of the Tuscaroras versus the Shawnees in 
> the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I am not aware of their 
> conflict being triggered by other tribes moving

[PEN-L:3127] RE: Re: If Asia was more advanced, why did West rise?

[Max Sawicky]

>  Since Ricardo brings up "long waves" in connection 
> with the discussion of Frank, let me simply note that these 
> are Braudel "la duree" 300-400 year waves and not the lower 
> level 40-50 year Kondratievs.  . . .

Actually we're in the middle of a 4000-year
geological wave whose within-wave variation
pales before between-wave ones.

Which reminds me, re: Wallerstein's prediction
that world capitalism will collapse at some point
in the next 50 years, could somebody please tell
me when so I can put it on my Y2K-compliant
calendar.

mbs

[PEN-L:3126] Re: selling Manhattan

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Charles,
 I think you are still evading the issue here.  It is 
fine to argue that there was no conception of "private 
property in land" and also that there was no juridically 
defined "territory" because (at least in what is now the 
US) there were no "states."  But, are all those books one 
picks up that identify certain parts of North America with 
certain tribes some bogus "projection"?  We know that in 
those zones were spots viewed as sacred by the tribes in 
question, some of them ancestral burial grounds.  Somehow 
it came about that certain tribes predominated in certain 
areas rather than others, with some zones being shared such 
as the collective hunting zone of West Virginia and the 
Shenandoah Valley.  The process of this was not always a 
peaceful business.
 BTW, it may be true that the ancestors of the Aztecs 
founded Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).  But from there they 
conquered and dominated the previous rulers of the central 
valley of Mexico, who operated from a different 
headquarters, just as those rulers had conquered and 
displaced as rulers the "Teotihuacaners" some time earlier 
who had their base at the pyramids about 30 miles north of 
modern Mexico City.  I note that the central valley of 
Mexico has long been a major culture basin, as being near 
the likely original site of the cultivation of maize (corn).
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 09 Feb 1999 13:55:01 -0500 Charles Brown 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> 
> >>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 1:22 PM >>>
> Charles,
> Well, I guess I'll add a bit more on this pre-European 
> intertribal conflicts issue.  Again, of course, except for 
> places like the central valley of Mexico where there are 
> historical records, we only know about things that went on 
> either after or just before the Europeans arrived in other 
> places.  But I fear that conjuring an Edenic paradise where 
> all the tribes lived in harmony with one another is yet 
> another "projection," however lovely.
> 
> 
> Charles: Of course, I didn't say that. I said there is evidence of fighting, but 
>there is also evidence of lack of private property and territory. There is 
>archaeological evidence too, of course. Also, there is an anthropological 
>generalization about modes of production, so that evidence from elsewhere , though 
>"projected", is more scientific than projecting a Hebrew Biblical myth ( although I 
>find it interesting that the Garden of Eden was a GARDEN , and horticulture is what 
>anthropology/archaeology has concluded was the mode of production which "fell out of 
>the Garden" with agriculture and civilization)
> ___
> 
> Barkley: 
>  Certainly there were lots of intertribal conflicts 
> that were triggered by the European colonists pushing 
> tribes west, as with the Chippewas pushing the Sioux out of 
> northern Wisconsin even before any Europeans got into that 
> area.  But a lot of other cases are less clear.
>  In the case of the Tuscaroras versus the Shawnees in 
> the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I am not aware of their 
> conflict being triggered by other tribes moving in pushed 
> by the Europeans.  Neither of them lived east of the Blue 
> Ridge, the limit of settlement at the time of the Battle of 
> Rawley Springs between them.  It may be "European 
> projections" but it is certainly recorded that it was over 
> access to the valley.  I note that the Shenandoah Valley 
> and what is now West Virginia were one of the few (on some 
> maps the only) places in North America that was not clearly 
> predomiantly under the control and use of a single tribe or 
> group of tribes.  It was an intertribal collective hunting 
> ground.  But that in itself meant that priority rights of 
> use were murky and could be disputed from time to time, 
> possibly even violently as happened at Rawley Springs 
> sometime in the 1720s (forget the exact date).
> 
> 
> Charles: You have no evidentiary basis for saying that because it was intertribal , 
>therefore the priority of rights of use were murky, etc. It is possible for human 
>beings from different groups to share with almost no disputes compared to our 
>experience. Communism is possible. Capitalist and acquisative conceptions are not 
>human universals. 
> 
> 
> 
> Barkley:
>  Actually that particular conflict reflected a broader 
> one that get tangled up in European conflicts but which 
> most reports suggest had been around before they arrived. 
> 
> 
> Charles: Unfortunately, these reports were written by people who had a motive to say 
>what you are saying here: that " we Europeans are not doing anything that the Savages 
>(sic) weren't doing to each other already." - in other words, as justification for 
>taking the land themselves. The regularly used term "savage" implies they were even 
>more warlike than the Europeans. I definitely disbelieve that.
> 
> You have to read those reports with a very jaundiced 

[PEN-L:3125] Re: Re: Re: The trouble with long waves

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Doug,
 And since 1995?  Of course East Asia is down, but is 
not most of the rest of the world up somewhat?  Certainly 
the US has been and Europe, both East and West (although 
parts of the East are not up relative to the socialist 
period), and, I think, Africa.   Latin America maybe not.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 9 Feb 1999 14:17:49 -0500 Doug Henwood 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:
> 
> >Personally I prefer GDP growth rates, not profit rates.
> >And, no, I am not going to get into a data slinging match
> >with you.  If you want to argue that GDP growth in the
> >1990s is lower than in the 1970s or 1980s, fine.  Be my
> >guest.
> 
> I want to argue that because it's true, at least according to these
> superficial bourgeois numbers from the bloodsucking imperialists at the IMF:
> 
> 1970-79 1980-891990-99
> world 4.1 3.43.0
> "industrial"  3.3 2.92.3
>   U.S.2.8 2.72.4
>   Japan   5.2 3.81.5
>   Germany 3.1 1.82.4
>   EU  2.32.0
> "developing"  5.6 4.35.3
>   Africa  4.4 2.52.8
>   Asia5.4 7.07.0
>   Europe  5.7
>   Middle East 7.3
>   Middle East/Europe  2.23.8
>   Western Hemisphere  5.7 2.23.2
> 
> source: IMF, World Economic Outlook, April 1988 and October 1998 editions
> 
> Obviously, the 1998 numbers are based on estimates, and the 1999 ones on
> projections.
> 
> 
> 
> Doug
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:3124] Re: If Asia was more advanced, why did West rise?

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

 Since Ricardo brings up "long waves" in connection 
with the discussion of Frank, let me simply note that these 
are Braudel "la duree" 300-400 year waves and not the lower 
level 40-50 year Kondratievs.  Braudel also labeled these 
"geographical" cycles and they have demographic, even 
Malthusian, component that is very important.
 Thus, for Braudel, "crashes" coincided with Malthusian 
population declines due to war, famine, pestilence.  In 
Europe these include the plague deaths in the Eastern 
Mediterranean that paved the way for the displacement of 
Greeks with Slavs and Turks.  Then in the 900s associated 
with Viking invasions and general collapses.  Then there is 
the major blowout of the "Black Death" of the mid 1300s 
which was preceded by about 50 centuries of mounting 
famines weakening the immune systems of the populations 
that died of plague.  And then we have a similar blowout in 
the late 1600s.  
 Frank used to argue that such points are when one can 
get a switch between European and Asian dominance and that 
we are now at such a switch point again on this much longer 
long wave (Braudel, not Kondratiev), even if we are not 
having a collapse/blowout in the European/North American 
zone.
Barkley Rosser 
On Tue, 9 Feb 1999 15:30:17 -0400 Ricardo Duchesne 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The A.G.Frank of Re-Orient is a great admirer of Smith, not Marx. 
> Except for a minor point, every reference to Marx is 
> highly negative, whereas those to Smith are always positive. 
> As will become evident later, this is a new Frank, a sinocentric 
> (anti-eurocentric) one; the old Frank of "underdevelopment or 
> revolution" is no longer.
> 
> Let me emphasise that the figure I posted yesterday (Rostow, 
> 1978) to the effect that Europe accounted for 69% of world trade in 
> 1720 appears to be a generally accepted one as it is also cited by 
> Chilsom (1982) and Aldcroft (1994). And Frank, as one would hope, 
> knows about such figures, as he cites Holtfrerich's figure that the 
> European share of all world trade was 69% and 72% in 1720 and 
> 1750. But his reaction is the rather blind one that "this unabashedly 
> Eurocentric claim is disconfirmed by the evidence discussed in the 
> present book" (183). I think those readers of my posts who read Re-Orient 
> will agree I have been as fair as possible to Frank's side of 
> the argument, presenting  all  his key figures;  yet none of 
> these figures constitute an adequate response to that simple fact 
> given by Holtrerich, or the others I cited. 
> 
> Instead Frank digs himself into a deeper hole, adding precisely 
> the point I made yesterday that Asia's exports to Europe were a 
> "very small share of Asia's trade" - which of course simply suggests 
> that Asia had its own world-economy with a hyphen, one that was 
> secondary to Europe's own world-economy. Some may wonder why is he 
> digging himself into such a hole? Well, because he wants to convice 
> us that Europe was an insignificant player in the assumed Asian 
> dominated world market. And that's not all,  the hole gets bigger 
> as he adds immediately that Asian exports to Europe "remained higher than 
> Europe's imports from the Americas" (183) - which brings us to the 
> role of the colonial trade, and  the relation of the old to the new 
> Frank. 
> 
> I am leaving for now Frank's arguements on the 
> technological-institutional superiority of Asia to concentrate on the 
> question "Why did the West Win (temporarily)?
> 
> Frank approaches this using the theory of long waves. He speaks of a 
> major "A" phase period of  world expansion from AD 1000/1050 to 
> 1250/1300, followed by a contraction from 1250 to 1450, followed by a 
> a new "A" phase expansion after 1450. In both these two "A" 
> phases, he says, China was the center of  world expansion. This post 
> 1450 growth lasted into the 18th century, followed  by "B" phase 
> contraction after 1800. Now, this long post-1450 expansive cycle, 
> like any other long wave, experienced a Kondratieff "B" phase 
> downturn in the 17th century, one which, however, hit the "weaker" 
> European economy harder than it did Asia. 
> 
> But another Kondratieff  "B" cycle that hit after the 1760s gave 
> Europe the chance to overcome its (still) marginal position in the 
> world economy - seemingly using Wallerstein's argument (1979) that, 
> contrary to strict dependency theory, at certain historical junctures 
> opportunities are created for some less developed economies to move up. 
> So, what were the opportunities that Europe had?  A favorable factor 
> endowment of natural resources and relative prices of labor and capital. 
> For one, it had cheap sources of capital , from the extraction of gold,
> the slave trade, the plantations, and the re-export trade. But what 
> about O'Brien's powerful finding that the colonial trade amounted to 
> no more than 2%  of Europe's GNP in the late 18th century? On 
> the one hand, Frank a

[PEN-L:3139] social security

[Jim Devine]

here's the kind of hand-out I think up for my intro-econ class:

Econ. 120/Dr. J. Devine/Spring 1999

The Future of Social Security

The Social Security system is not paid for by people paying taxes now to
accumulate assets that people in the future spend when they get SS
benefits. It's a "pay as you go" system. Basically, what happens is as
follows: 
The SS benefits received now = the SS tax revenues collected now - any SS
tax revenues not spent (the SS budget surplus).

 Assuming that the SS system does not run a surplus, this means that as the
SS system is organized now, the future of the system depends on the growth
of :

1. the number of people who have paying jobs and contribute to SS by paying
taxes, 
2. the wages these workers are paid and 
3. the tax rate on these wages. 

All of these could be changed. First, instead of being paid for out of
wages, SS taxes could be put on all income (including dividends and
interest). Second, instead of taxing only the first $68,400 of wage income,
this "cap" could be removed. Third, the SS tax rate could rise. Fourth,
wages of employed workers could rise a lot. Fifth, benefits received by
retirees (and the disabled) could be reduced or the retirement age could be
raised. Sixth, some of the SS revenues could be put into interest-bearing
assets. All of these could be used to "save" the SS system.

But these ignore the key issue: when there are people who are not working
(the retirees), they must be supported by those who are working. This is
true whether the retirees are supported by SS or by direct payments from
their children or by interest payments on the wealth the retirees own. So
the benefits that the retirees in the future get depend on:

1. how many retirees there are relative to the employed workers, and 
2. how generous the employed workers are to the non-workers.
3. how much each employed worker produces (labor productivity)

The scare about the SS system going broke depends on #1: there will be too
many old folks in the year 2025 compared to the number of retired people.
The fear is that the large number of old folks then will imply that the
employed workers will have to pay an outrageous percentage of their income
to pay for the retirees -- or be less generous, so that oldsters will eat
dogfood.

But we have to look at #3. The growth of labor productivity is crucial to
future prosperity: Our ability to produce and to consume (potential real
GDP) = employed workers at the target U rate * labor productivity.

Assume that the unemployment rate is constant. Thus, the actual and
potential real GDP (and our ability to pay retirement benefits) grows with
the labor force and labor productivity. For example, if the labor force
grows 2 percent per year and labor productivity grows 3 percent per years,
we see the following changes:

Labor force Labor productivity  Real GDP
Year #1 100 1   100
Year #2 102 1.03105

This means that the growth of our ability to distribute benefits to both
the employed and the retired grows according to the following formula:

Growth rate = growth rate of the labor force + the growth rate of labor
productivity.

The SS scare is based on the unmentioned assumption that both the labor
force and labor productivity will be growing very slowly in the future. The
SS Trustees assume that for the next 75 years. This assumes that the
economy will be growing much more slowly than during the last 75 years (3.3
percent). In other words, it assumes that the economy is going to be in
disastrous straits for the next 75 years. This doesn't simply hurt the SS
system. If the economy is growing at only 1.4 percent per year, the stock
market will do very poorly, too. All of our incomes will be growing slowly,
creating all sorts of problems. 

You can see how growth rates work using the following table:

Growth rate = 1.4%   2% 2.5%

1999 real GDP   100 100 100
2000 real GDP   101.4   102 102.5
2001 real GDP   102.8   104 105.1
…   …   …   …
2025 real GDP   141.6   164 185

The SS Trustees assume the first column, where our ability to support both
the employed and the retired will be quite low compared to a more
reasonable growth rate given historical experience in the US.
 
Thanks to Doug Henwood's Left Business Observer for the above diagram. 

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

[PEN-L:3123] Re: fwd: Wampum

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

--- Begin Forwarded Message ---
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 13:29:18 -0500
From: Stephanie Ann Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: fwd: [PEN-L:3038] Wampum
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: POST-KEYNESIAN THOUGHT <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


John Henry is off PKT, so i sent him the 'wampum' post.  here's his
response:

Wampum was (were) "story-telling" belts. The stones/shells (size,
order, color) when properly interpreted allowed those affected to recall
various agreements, events, etc. that were important in the tribal
history. In the Iroquois Confederacy, they were also made and presented
at the conclusion of various discussions among the different tribes.
THese signified both agreement and commitment to honor that agreement.
Or, as one sachem said, "This belt preserves my words."

Possibly (though I don't know) belts were made and GIVEN (note
emphasis) as symbols of a successful trade, but they themselves would
never be traded as long as they were still the history books of the
tribe. 

It is probable that once a propertied society impinged on the Indians,
these belts became converted into money but I don't know the process
(nor does anyone else). We could probably speculate.

P.S. I saw some beauties in an Iroquois museum we saw in the
Adirondacks - including the one the Iroquois gave to George Washington
for some reason. (He was known to the Iroquois as "Destroyer of
Villages" so I don't know why they would give him a belt.) 

Stephanie Bell


--- End Forwarded Message ---


-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:3119] If Asia was more advanced, why did West rise?

[Ricardo Duchesne]

The A.G.Frank of Re-Orient is a great admirer of Smith, not Marx. 
Except for a minor point, every reference to Marx is 
highly negative, whereas those to Smith are always positive. 
As will become evident later, this is a new Frank, a sinocentric 
(anti-eurocentric) one; the old Frank of "underdevelopment or 
revolution" is no longer.

Let me emphasise that the figure I posted yesterday (Rostow, 
1978) to the effect that Europe accounted for 69% of world trade in 
1720 appears to be a generally accepted one as it is also cited by 
Chilsom (1982) and Aldcroft (1994). And Frank, as one would hope, 
knows about such figures, as he cites Holtfrerich's figure that the 
European share of all world trade was 69% and 72% in 1720 and 
1750. But his reaction is the rather blind one that "this unabashedly 
Eurocentric claim is disconfirmed by the evidence discussed in the 
present book" (183). I think those readers of my posts who read Re-Orient 
will agree I have been as fair as possible to Frank's side of 
the argument, presenting  all  his key figures;  yet none of 
these figures constitute an adequate response to that simple fact 
given by Holtrerich, or the others I cited. 

Instead Frank digs himself into a deeper hole, adding precisely 
the point I made yesterday that Asia's exports to Europe were a 
"very small share of Asia's trade" - which of course simply suggests 
that Asia had its own world-economy with a hyphen, one that was 
secondary to Europe's own world-economy. Some may wonder why is he 
digging himself into such a hole? Well, because he wants to convice 
us that Europe was an insignificant player in the assumed Asian 
dominated world market. And that's not all,  the hole gets bigger 
as he adds immediately that Asian exports to Europe "remained higher than 
Europe's imports from the Americas" (183) - which brings us to the 
role of the colonial trade, and  the relation of the old to the new 
Frank. 

I am leaving for now Frank's arguements on the 
technological-institutional superiority of Asia to concentrate on the 
question "Why did the West Win (temporarily)?

Frank approaches this using the theory of long waves. He speaks of a 
major "A" phase period of  world expansion from AD 1000/1050 to 
1250/1300, followed by a contraction from 1250 to 1450, followed by a 
a new "A" phase expansion after 1450. In both these two "A" 
phases, he says, China was the center of  world expansion. This post 
1450 growth lasted into the 18th century, followed  by "B" phase 
contraction after 1800. Now, this long post-1450 expansive cycle, 
like any other long wave, experienced a Kondratieff "B" phase 
downturn in the 17th century, one which, however, hit the "weaker" 
European economy harder than it did Asia. 

But another Kondratieff  "B" cycle that hit after the 1760s gave 
Europe the chance to overcome its (still) marginal position in the 
world economy - seemingly using Wallerstein's argument (1979) that, 
contrary to strict dependency theory, at certain historical junctures 
opportunities are created for some less developed economies to move up. 
So, what were the opportunities that Europe had?  A favorable factor 
endowment of natural resources and relative prices of labor and capital. 
For one, it had cheap sources of capital , from the extraction of gold,
the slave trade, the plantations, and the re-export trade. But what 
about O'Brien's powerful finding that the colonial trade amounted to 
no more than 2%  of Europe's GNP in the late 18th century? On 
the one hand, Frank appears to take this evidence seriously but 
thinks there other types of evidence do suggest this trade was 
highly important to Europe's economy: "we must agree with 
O'Brien that the evidence will never settle this issue" (42).  On the 
other, he says that O'Brien's figures do not "bear so much on the 
real dispute between us" (42). What he means, I take it, is that it 
was the monies extracted from the Americas which allowed Europe to 
enter the Asian market, and that Europe, without ever 
dominating the world market, accumulated huge profits "from the carrying 
trade and from parleying multiple transactions in bullion, money, and 
commodities in multiple markets (177). In the end, actually, Frank 
more or less dismisses O'Brien's evidence, as he goes on to say 
that the colonial trade was the crucial source of capital for Europe, for 
colonies "supplied not only almost free money, but also servile 
labor and the cheap sugar, tabacco, timber, cotton, and other goods 
produced in the Americas for European consumption [which] gave them 
access to the silk, cotton textles, and spices" of  Asia (295). To 
boot, he even cites such outdated sources as Mandel and Eric 
Williams, with the additional, if rather lame argument, that the 
supply of colonial capital brought interest rates down  from 12% in 
the 1690s to 8% in 1694 to 3% in 1752, thus cheapening investment 
(296).  

But a simple quesion now needs to be posed:  did not the bulli

[PEN-L:3120] Re: Re: Aztecs

[Charles Brown]

Yes, I agree that the "starting between communities" is part of his thesis. The gift 
exchange may be within one community. Interesting.  I'd have to look into the facts of 
"wampum" more. I wonder what language that is.

I would be surprised if the land on Manhattan was part of the commodities of those 
tribes. 

Charles

>>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 2:11 PM >>>
>I always thought ( after Marx , Chapter 1, Vol. 1 of _Capital_) that
technically money only exists in commodity exchange ? 
>
>There is a large anthropological literature on primary cultural gift
exchange, reciprocity, etc. as different than commodity exchange ( no
expectation of repayment, symbolically rather than accountingly constituted
etc.). <

I was thinking about the use of wampum between tribes or bands. Marx talks
about how commodity exchange starts at the borders between communities. And
if commodity exchange is happening, so is commodity production.


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

[PEN-L:3136] Re: The trouble with long waves

[Tom Walker]

Barkley Rosser wrote,

> And since 1995?  Of course East Asia is down, but is 
>not most of the rest of the world up somewhat?  Certainly 
>the US has been and Europe, both East and West (although 
>parts of the East are not up relative to the socialist 
>period), and, I think, Africa.   Latin America maybe not.

Barkley,

Aren't you thinking of the Farina wave: "been down so long it looks like up
to me"?

regards,

Tom Walker 

[PEN-L:3121] Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

>now, I'll agree with you that the 'more steel' versions of marxism are
>particularly horrid.but that does not mean that I'll agree with
>you that peasant forms of life are closer to what I would aspire to.
>my parents were peasants, and I think you idealise and exoticize way
>too much. they would tell you the same thing, not to mention regarding
>your nostalgia with deep suspicion.in order for both you and lm to
>make the kinds of sweeping claims you do, you have to idealise
>'pre-'capitalism and capitalism respectively.
>
>angela

I can't wait until Michael Perelman's new book on "primitive accumulation"
comes out. When I was reading a first draft, I kept telling him that I wish
Doug could read it. All that nonsense about peasants wanting to flee "rural
idiocy" gets put in the garbage can where it belongs.

The actual historical record is that peasants in what Michael calls
"self-provisioning" economies resisted proletarianization with all the
force they can muster. It was normal for peasants in the 17th century to
have the skills and raw materials to fashion their own shoes, for example.
When they lost their land and were forced into the factory system, it would
take days of labor to earn the wages they needed to buy a pair of
factory-made shoes. The capitalist system only began to be accepted, when
the technology advanced to the extent that it took less time at work to
gain the wage necessary to buy shoes than it took to make them at home.

In Africa, Latin America and Asia "primitive accumulation" never had the
same sort of benefits because the capital was exported back to England or
the United States. That is the reason for all the imperialist interventions
of the 20th century. Peasants were neither given the means for
self-provisioning, nor the wages to stay alive.

Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3122] RE: Re: RE: Re: Aztecs

[Max Sawicky]

> 
> I wrote: >> . . .

You wrote plenty of substantive, well, substance,
but one thing you said could be misinterpreted
by the superficial, reckless, or malevolent
reader (circle all which apply).

> 
> Max "mbs" Sawicky asks: >Is the whip used to force laborers to produce
> exchange value different from the one used to make them produce 
> use-values?<
> 
> The whip is the same . . .

In deference to you, Louis, and BDL, I must admit
everything I know about the Aztecs is from reading
Naked Lunch.

mbs

"I am a public agent and don't know who I work for . . . "

[PEN-L:3117] Re: Re: Re: The trouble with long waves

[Doug Henwood]

Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:

>Personally I prefer GDP growth rates, not profit rates.
>And, no, I am not going to get into a data slinging match
>with you.  If you want to argue that GDP growth in the
>1990s is lower than in the 1970s or 1980s, fine.  Be my
>guest.

I want to argue that because it's true, at least according to these
superficial bourgeois numbers from the bloodsucking imperialists at the IMF:

1970-79 1980-891990-99
world 4.1 3.43.0
"industrial"  3.3 2.92.3
  U.S.2.8 2.72.4
  Japan   5.2 3.81.5
  Germany 3.1 1.82.4
  EU  2.32.0
"developing"  5.6 4.35.3
  Africa  4.4 2.52.8
  Asia5.4 7.07.0
  Europe  5.7
  Middle East 7.3
  Middle East/Europe  2.23.8
  Western Hemisphere  5.7 2.23.2

source: IMF, World Economic Outlook, April 1988 and October 1998 editions

Obviously, the 1998 numbers are based on estimates, and the 1999 ones on
projections.



Doug

[PEN-L:3115] Re: Re: Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

Doug:
>Well, yes. I never made any claims to the contrary. One of the reasons I
>started LBO was because I thought left journalism, whatever that means
>these days, was very deficient at reporting and analyzing big capital. Big
>capital owns and controls much of the world, and there's all too little
>examination of how it works. Back during the 1980s debt crisis, one of the
>leading left experts on the issue told me he didn't understand finance,
>which I thought was a fairly stunning admission. I do my best to understand
>it, and share my understanding with people willing to listen. You can't
>cover everything, after all.

The problem is not that you are exercising editorial restraint. If this was
all that we were dealing with, there'd be no problem. What I am talking
about is your deficiency in a very important aspect of the world economy,
which sticks out like a sore thumb when you write about Nigeria, for
example. You interjected yourself into a discussion about the role of
imperialism in Nigeria with an approach that struck me as totally innocent
of the critique made by people like Samir Amin. I don't care if you decide
to ignore this literature and continue reading Zizek's movie reviews. I
would not pretend, however, that I knew anything about the African economy.




Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3114] Re: Aztecs

[Doug Henwood]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>In all the years that
>I've been reading LBO-Talk, there has been very little coverage of the
>problems of the typical third world denizen, namely those who work the
>land.

Well, yes. I never made any claims to the contrary. One of the reasons I
started LBO was because I thought left journalism, whatever that means
these days, was very deficient at reporting and analyzing big capital. Big
capital owns and controls much of the world, and there's all too little
examination of how it works. Back during the 1980s debt crisis, one of the
leading left experts on the issue told me he didn't understand finance,
which I thought was a fairly stunning admission. I do my best to understand
it, and share my understanding with people willing to listen. You can't
cover everything, after all.

By the way, there is no such thing as a "typical third world denizen,"
unless you're looking at the world through a colonizer's eye and see
nothing but undifferentiated subalterns out there. About two-thirds to
three-quarters of the populations of Africa, South Asia, and China live in
rural areas, but almost three-quarters of Latin Americans live in cities.

Doug

[PEN-L:3113] Re: selling Manhattan

[Charles Brown]

>>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 1:22 PM >>>
Charles,
Well, I guess I'll add a bit more on this pre-European 
intertribal conflicts issue.  Again, of course, except for 
places like the central valley of Mexico where there are 
historical records, we only know about things that went on 
either after or just before the Europeans arrived in other 
places.  But I fear that conjuring an Edenic paradise where 
all the tribes lived in harmony with one another is yet 
another "projection," however lovely.


Charles: Of course, I didn't say that. I said there is evidence of fighting, but there 
is also evidence of lack of private property and territory. There is archaeological 
evidence too, of course. Also, there is an anthropological generalization about modes 
of production, so that evidence from elsewhere , though "projected", is more 
scientific than projecting a Hebrew Biblical myth ( although I find it interesting 
that the Garden of Eden was a GARDEN , and horticulture is what 
anthropology/archaeology has concluded was the mode of production which "fell out of 
the Garden" with agriculture and civilization)
___

Barkley: 
 Certainly there were lots of intertribal conflicts 
that were triggered by the European colonists pushing 
tribes west, as with the Chippewas pushing the Sioux out of 
northern Wisconsin even before any Europeans got into that 
area.  But a lot of other cases are less clear.
 In the case of the Tuscaroras versus the Shawnees in 
the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I am not aware of their 
conflict being triggered by other tribes moving in pushed 
by the Europeans.  Neither of them lived east of the Blue 
Ridge, the limit of settlement at the time of the Battle of 
Rawley Springs between them.  It may be "European 
projections" but it is certainly recorded that it was over 
access to the valley.  I note that the Shenandoah Valley 
and what is now West Virginia were one of the few (on some 
maps the only) places in North America that was not clearly 
predomiantly under the control and use of a single tribe or 
group of tribes.  It was an intertribal collective hunting 
ground.  But that in itself meant that priority rights of 
use were murky and could be disputed from time to time, 
possibly even violently as happened at Rawley Springs 
sometime in the 1720s (forget the exact date).


Charles: You have no evidentiary basis for saying that because it was intertribal , 
therefore the priority of rights of use were murky, etc. It is possible for human 
beings from different groups to share with almost no disputes compared to our 
experience. Communism is possible. Capitalist and acquisative conceptions are not 
human universals. 



Barkley:
 Actually that particular conflict reflected a broader 
one that get tangled up in European conflicts but which 
most reports suggest had been around before they arrived. 


Charles: Unfortunately, these reports were written by people who had a motive to say 
what you are saying here: that " we Europeans are not doing anything that the Savages 
(sic) weren't doing to each other already." - in other words, as justification for 
taking the land themselves. The regularly used term "savage" implies they were even 
more warlike than the Europeans. I definitely disbelieve that.

You have to read those reports with a very jaundiced eye,sort of like with a CIA 
analysis of Viet Nam from the 1960's.

__

Barkley:
That was the one between the Iroquois group of tribes 
(including the Tuscaroras) and the Algonkian group of 
tribes (including the Shawnees).  Indeed, the Iroquois 
Confederacy, viewed by Benjamin Franklin as a model for the 
United States, was by most accounts formed to defend those 
tribes against the larger numbers of Algonkians around 
them, who were not so well organized.  These differences 
were linguistic and also socio-cultural, with the Iroquois 
being matrilineal whereas the Algonkians were patrilineal.  
In the "French and Indian War" the Iroquois sided with the 
British against the French and the majority Algonkians.  In 
the American Revolution, the British opposed the entry of 
settlers into the Iroquois lands because of this past 
alliance (although by then the British were defending 
Indian land rights against the colonists in many areas) and 
I know that my original hometown, Ithaca, NY, was not 
settled by Europeans until 1782, after the defeat of the 
British and the removal of their protection of the Iroquois.
 Although the arrival of the Europeans may have 
aggravated the Iroquois-Algonkian conflict and certainly 
the conflicts on both sides became intertwined, I see 
little reason to believe that there was total peace between 
these two groups prior to the arrival of the Europeans.
___

Charles: Yes, but most of the above is clearly after "contact". The Europeans had the 
motive to stir up stuff between the tribes in divide and conq

[PEN-L:3111] Re: Re: The trouble with long waves

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Doug,
Personally I prefer GDP growth rates, not profit rates. 
And, no, I am not going to get into a data slinging match 
with you.  If you want to argue that GDP growth in the 
1990s is lower than in the 1970s or 1980s, fine.  Be my 
guest.
Barkley Rosser
On Mon, 8 Feb 1999 20:57:32 -0500 Doug Henwood 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:
> 
> > Of course when Mandel's book came out was just at the
> >end of what most long wavers would say was the last uptick,
> >just before the down phase that came in after 1973.
> >Whether the new uptick began in the 1980s as Shaikh and
> >some others argue or after the recession of the early 1990s
> >as others would argue (and I tend to think) is a matter for
> >open dispute.
> 
> What's your metric for long waves? Profit rates? In the U.S., 1982 was the
> bottom. But Japan has since fallen apart and Europe has long been in the
> mud. The 1990s? U.S. profit rates have flattened, Europe is still in the
> mud, as is Japan, and the Asian NICs fell apart. What's up, besides the
> NASDAQ?
> 
> Doug
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:3110] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Ernest Mandel on long waves

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Doug,
 No.  But this is an example of the "septic tank 
effect" as Jim Devine put it.  We only got the internet 
after a certain level of development of computers (the PC) 
and a certain level of saturation and spread of their use.  
This allowed the emergence of a qualitatively different 
result with a related series of investments and expansion.  
I did not pose the internet as the source of the current 
uptick but as simply a part and in response to your remark 
that "we have had computers around for 50 years."
Barkley Rosser
On Mon, 8 Feb 1999 21:00:38 -0500 Doug Henwood 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote:
> 
> >And the
> >internet is largely a 1990s phenomenon.
> 
> And, for the masses, about 2 years old. Is a long wave based on 2 years
> evidence?
> 
> Doug
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:3109] Re: Re: Re: Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

>Louis,
> Ah, but then we have the human sacrifice practiced by 
>the Aztecs.  Next we shall hear about the "light rule" by 
>the Germans at Auschwitz.
>Barkley Rosser

This is ahistorical. We are trying to identify the differences between
precapitalist Latin America and what took its place. What took its place
was a Spanish version of Auschwitz.



Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3108] We are waiting

[Louis Proyect]

>Why would anyone object to Dave Richardson's amazingly useful reports?  I,
>for one, don't have time to read every major paper every day and find lots
>of interesting nuggets in the Daily Labor Reports.  Please keep them
>coming, Dave!
>
>   Ellen Frank

Oh please, Geri doesn't really have any major problems with Dave's reports.
He just included him in his diatribe so it wouldn't appear that he was
making attempt number 117 to start a flame war with me. He has been warned
to stop causing trouble, but this doesn't seem to be working. This reminds
me of my one-month stint as a schoolteacher in 1968 at an Intermediate
School in Harlem. When I first warned a student that I was going to bring
in their parents, they'd sit down at their seats and keep quiet. On the
second warning, they'd sit down but begin whispering to their neighbor. On
the third warning, they'd stay out of their seats and start yelling "fuck
you". On my final day, I had gotten to my fourth warning, when the
principal spotted me from the classroom window facing the hallway and came
in and untied me.

Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3107] Re: Re: Aztecs

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Louis,
 Ah, but then we have the human sacrifice practiced by 
the Aztecs.  Next we shall hear about the "light rule" by 
the Germans at Auschwitz.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 09 Feb 1999 09:29:12 -0500 Louis Proyect 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Brad deLong wrote:
> >In general, the Aztecs
> >>and Incas ruled with a relatively light hand
> >>
> >>Louis Proyect
> >
> >
> >!
> 
> Anthropologist John Murra's article in the Peru Reader titled "Cloth,
> Textile, and the Inca Empire" sets down the exact nature of the tributary
> glue that held this civilization together. Subjects of the Incas had to
> spend a portion of their year weaving fine cloth out of cotton. The
> imperial army wore the clothing and when it conquered a new tribe, they
> presented the victims with a new wardrobe! This helped to cement them
> socially and soften the blow of defeat.
> 
> Other tributary forms of labor included farming, soldiering, and mining,
> but it was spinning and weaving that occupied a central place. Clothing was
> functional, since the Andean climate was bitterly cold for much of the
> year. It also had esthetic and religious value. Puberty rites were the
> occasion for presenting a young boy or girl with new clothes. Feathers were
> an important part of clothing and one Spaniard reported on a warehouse that
> contained 100,000 dried birds just for this purpose. The sacredness
> attached to clothing persisted long after the fall of the Inca state. It
> was common to strip Europeans of their clothing after a skirmish took
> place. Most of all, clothing was a sign of status:
> 
> "Any commodity so highly valued is bound to acquire rank and class
> connotations. The king had certain fabrics reserved for his use alone and
> his shirts are reported to have been very delicate, embroidered with gold
> and silver, ornamented with feathers, and sometimes made of such rare
> fibers as bat hair. Morfia claims to have handled a royal garment so
> delicately made that it fitted into the hollow of his hand.
> 
> "The main insignia of royalty was a red wool fringe which fell over the
> king's forehead and was sewn onto his headdress. Kings were quite
> fastidious and changed their clothing frequently. Morfia and Garcilaso tell
> us that royalty gave away their discarded apparel, but Pedro Pizarro claims
> to have seen hampers which contained all of Atawalpa's used clothing, along
> with the bones and corn cobs he had gnawed on. This is credible as we know
> from Pedro Sancho, another and independent witness of the invasion, that
> the mummies of deceased kings kept "everything"--not only vessels used for
> eating, but all hair, nail parings, and clothes."
> 
> The Inca state used coercion to draft spinners, weavers, shepherds,
> soldiers and farmers into its vast productive machine. It also made
> extensive use of census takers, tax collectors, messengers and clerks.
> These skilled workers kept track of what was being produced, who was
> producing it and how much was owed in terms of the payee and the payer.
> Most importantly, there was a professional army that kept everybody in line.
> 
> Thomas C. Patterson's "The Inca Empire: The Formation and Disintegration of
> a Pre-Capitalist State" provides a Marxist analysis of how the Incas ruled:
> 
> "The state had available a series of institutions and practices to ensure
> the regular and systematic extraction of tribute from the peoples they
> subjugated. This exploitation was backed up by the army, diplomacy,
> coercion, and intimidation. The state used the up-to-date census
> information to levy labor taxes on the subject populations and the
> households that comprised them. It imposed two kinds of taxes. The first
> was the mit'a, which consisted of a specific number of days of labor in the
> army, in public works projects, or in personal service to the emperor or
> various officials and agencies of the state. The other form of labor
> taxation involved agricultural or pastoral work in fields appropriated by
> the royal corporations, the state, or the state cult or in caring for the
> herds of llamas and alpacas they pastured in the territory of their
> subjects. The tax burden was apparently not equally distributed across the
> various groups incorporated into the state. Greater demands were placed on
> some accounting units than others in the same province, and the demands for
> labor from frontier populations were less than those from groups in the
> core areas of the state."
> 
> Patterson is unstinting in his portrayal of the Inca ruling elite. The
> quest for power consumes them. They are either fighting with each other in
> wars of succession as characters in a Shakespeare play do, or with outlying
> tribes who resist assimilation. This unflattering portrait is a reaction,
> one must suppose, to the tendency of "indigenists" to view Inca
> civilization as enlightened and humane. It is one thing for an
> archaeologist to admire their artifacts, but Patterson's 

[PEN-L:3104] Re: selling Manhattan

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Charles,
Well, I guess I'll add a bit more on this pre-European 
intertribal conflicts issue.  Again, of course, except for 
places like the central valley of Mexico where there are 
historical records, we only know about things that went on 
either after or just before the Europeans arrived in other 
places.  But I fear that conjuring an Edenic paradise where 
all the tribes lived in harmony with one another is yet 
another "projection," however lovely.
 Certainly there were lots of intertribal conflicts 
that were triggered by the European colonists pushing 
tribes west, as with the Chippewas pushing the Sioux out of 
northern Wisconsin even before any Europeans got into that 
area.  But a lot of other cases are less clear.
 In the case of the Tuscaroras versus the Shawnees in 
the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I am not aware of their 
conflict being triggered by other tribes moving in pushed 
by the Europeans.  Neither of them lived east of the Blue 
Ridge, the limit of settlement at the time of the Battle of 
Rawley Springs between them.  It may be "European 
projections" but it is certainly recorded that it was over 
access to the valley.  I note that the Shenandoah Valley 
and what is now West Virginia were one of the few (on some 
maps the only) places in North America that was not clearly 
predomiantly under the control and use of a single tribe or 
group of tribes.  It was an intertribal collective hunting 
ground.  But that in itself meant that priority rights of 
use were murky and could be disputed from time to time, 
possibly even violently as happened at Rawley Springs 
sometime in the 1720s (forget the exact date).
 Actually that particular conflict reflected a broader 
one that get tangled up in European conflicts but which 
most reports suggest had been around before they arrived.  
That was the one between the Iroquois group of tribes 
(including the Tuscaroras) and the Algonkian group of 
tribes (including the Shawnees).  Indeed, the Iroquois 
Confederacy, viewed by Benjamin Franklin as a model for the 
United States, was by most accounts formed to defend those 
tribes against the larger numbers of Algonkians around 
them, who were not so well organized.  These differences 
were linguistic and also socio-cultural, with the Iroquois 
being matrilineal whereas the Algonkians were patrilineal.  
In the "French and Indian War" the Iroquois sided with the 
British against the French and the majority Algonkians.  In 
the American Revolution, the British opposed the entry of 
settlers into the Iroquois lands because of this past 
alliance (although by then the British were defending 
Indian land rights against the colonists in many areas) and 
I know that my original hometown, Ithaca, NY, was not 
settled by Europeans until 1782, after the defeat of the 
British and the removal of their protection of the Iroquois.
 Although the arrival of the Europeans may have 
aggravated the Iroquois-Algonkian conflict and certainly 
the conflicts on both sides became intertwined, I see 
little reason to believe that there was total peace between 
these two groups prior to the arrival of the Europeans.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 09 Feb 1999 10:48:17 -0500 Charles Brown 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> 
> >>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/08 6:28 PM >>>
> Barkley:
> Charles,We're getting close enough to a "meeting of the minds" 
> here that are transactions might be almost not void.  Just 
> a couple of points.
> ___
> 
> Charles: Sounds good to me.
> __
> 
> Barkley:
> One is that it may well be (I don't know) that the 
> Dutch actually did not do anything that was unexpected of 
> them by the Indians they dealt with.  The unexpected and 
> unpleasant may have come later after the British displaced 
> the Dutch.  After all, the northern border of Nieuw 
> Amsterdam was Wall Street (named for the wall).  Broadway 
> was the country road linking it to the Dutch village of 
> Haarlem.  There was still plenty of land for the local 
> Indians to do their thing on Manhatten, although perhaps 
> the Dutch had already acted badly.  This is a reminder that 
> sometimes Europeans attempted to deal fairly with the 
> Indians only to have their agreements undercut and violated 
> later by their descendents or others taking their place.  
> Something similar happened in Pennsylvania I believe.
> ___
> Charles: This may be. I don't think that the European invasion was uniformly 
>purposeful viciousness, or that all Indian/European relations were European crimes. 
>Neither the Europeans nor Indians understood exactly what was going on especially 
>early on. I don't think that every ( or even any necessarily at sometimes) European 
>had a conscious "genocidal"motive for their actions. That kind of creeped up on 
>everybody.
> 
> One comment though: I don't know the specific traditions of the Manhattan Indians, 
>but in general the attitude to the land was not that eac

[PEN-L:3128] Re: Re: RE: Re: Aztecs

[Jim Devine]

Brad writes: >Consider the comparison of Erich Honecker and Ferdinand
Marcos. Erich Honecker exploits the East German people, and manages to get
some nice dinners, a pretty big house, some servants, and... a deer park.
That's the most he gets out of them in the way of surplus value because he
takes it out of his people in use-values. By contrast, Marcos gets... $3
billion. He can use the international financial architecture to take it out
of his people in exchange-values.<

I don't have a brief in favor of E. Germany (or the Marcosian Philippines)
and I'm not going to make one. But I do think it's a mistake to focus too
much on individuals. So let's move on...

>I think that the point is incomplete because it neglects the impact of the
social system on human productivity. Where labor power is effectively free
to the boss, the boss has no incentive to make sure that the labor power is
used productively.<

This is a valid point, as far as it goes. IMHO, both capitalism and
bureaucratic socialism (like the G.D.R., R.I.P.) are class systems in which
the ruling classes are striving to extract as much surplus-labor as
possible. (This is what "using labor-power productively" means in
practice.) The G.D.R., despite its technological advantages relative to the
rest of the old East Bloc, seems to have failed here, relative to
capitalism (though I am far from being an expert on this). On the other
hand, the ruling class there didn't have as much control over the workers'
work time, so that workers could say "we pretend to work" (like in the rest
of the East Bloc). The value of that kind of freedom (for the workers)
shouldn't be downplayed. (But for some reason it's left out of both GDP and
GMP statistics...)

This point goes further when we compare capitalism to the tributary mode of
production. The fact  (as I understand it) is that when the head Inca
wasn't mobilizing tributary labor (with whips, Max, because I know that
excites you) or taking tribute, the various communities under its rules
were pretty autonomous. They had freedom within the context of the Inca
empire's hierarchy. This meant that communities could "use labor-power
productively" for their communities' purposes. It's important to remember
that this use of labor is as important in the grand scheme of things as the
Inca's use of the tributary labor. (Strictly speaking, however, labor-power
was not a commodity under tributary modes of production or in such
communities.)

>Someone once wrote something about the bourgeoisie being a "most
revolutionary class" that awakened productive powers that no one before had
ever imagined slumbered in the lap of social labor. Capitalism gives you
higher productivity to go along with its higher rate of surplus value as
well. < 

Holding real wages constant, higher labor productivity implies a higher
rate of surplus-value by definition. But that's a quibble. 

It's important to remember that capitalism awakened the "productive powers
that no one before had ever imagined slumbered" by taking over the
production process completely (what Marx called the real subjection of
labor by capital). This allowed not only the increase in the productivity
of labor but also the amount of labor-effort done per hour of labor-power
sold (an increase in labor intensity). It also involved the increasing
dependence of workers on capital for their means of subsistence (falling
self-sufficiency), so that the entire life span of workers was under
capital's dominion, unless they struggled back. 

Not only that, the way that capitalism unleashed those productive powers
has led to greater and greater threats to not only non-capitalist systems
but the natural environment. (Bureaucratic socialism, which was an
authoritarian but relatively egalitarian effort to emulate capitalism while
promoting national economic development, had similar results.) 

>But if you are enslaved in the mines of Pitosi, capitalism is no bargain.
(Of course, if you have your heart torn out still beating in Tenochtitlan,
not-capitalism is no bargain.)<

Potosi is exactly what Marx was talking about when he said that combining
capitalism with overtly-forced labor was the worst of both worlds. On the
other hand, I never thought that being dominated by the Aztecs (or Incas,
for that matter) was socialism. 

Let's sing a chorus of "I left my heart in Tenochtitlan."

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

[PEN-L:3103] Maquilas

[Louis Proyect]

Doug:
>Ok, so let's for now assume that's what The Debate is about. On your list,
>Mark Jones quoted me saying that women who go to work in Mexican
>maquiladoras find some degree of liberation from rural patriarchy in their
>new lives, along with the exploitation and toxic waste that goes with the
>job. I based that on an article by the excellent journalist Debbie Nathan
>in The Nation and on research by the sociologist Leslie Salzinger.
>Salzinger spent a year working in factories and talking to her fellow
>workers.

I guess because they are excellent and publish in the Nation, this cinches
it. Against this article, I would recommend the vast amount of literature
that documents the oppression of women inside these factories, where they
are denied maternity leave and sexually exploited by foremen. You can find
this information by doing a search on "maquilas" on the worldwide web.

The Nation publishes any article for political reasons. Katrina Van den
Heuvel is a diehard Clinton supporter. Clinton's main "achievement" as
president is the passage of NAFTA. There are no silver linings to NAFTA. It
neither "lifts up" peasant women from "rural idiocy", nor does it advance
us toward socialism. The maquilas are hell on earth. What would probably
benefit you, Doug, is if you spent a week in Juarez talking to the
English-speaking social worker who has taken up the cause of young women
workers who are being murdered by one or more serial murderers. She would
be much more authoritative than Nation magazine Clinton apologetics.






Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3102] Petition

[EDT]

American Airlines is a major sponsor to and supporter of groups like:
GLADD, the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund,
the AIDS Action Foundation, DIFFA, AmFAR, and scores of
community-based groups representing gays and lesbians.  It is also the
first airline to adopt a written non-discrimination policy covering
sexual orientation in its employment practices.

In an unusual joint letter released to the media on March 14th from
the Family Research Council, Concerned Women of America, American
Family Association and Coral Ridge Ministries, American Airlines
was
openly criticized about their policy. Radical right leader Beverly
LaHaye also went on Christian "talk radio" on Friday to blast American
Airlines because American's sponsorship of homosexual 'pride' events
constitutes an open endorsement of "promiscuous homosexuality."

She and the other groups have written Bob Crandall at American to 
complain
that the airline has "gone beyond mere tolerance" of gays and lesbians.
It has come to the attention of the gay and lesbian community that
American Airline's switchboard and e-mails are being bombarded now by
homophobic and hateful callers who have been urged by LaHaye and others
to DEMAND the company terminate its gay-friendly policies.
You don't have to be gay or lesbian or, for that matter, of any
particular sexual nature to respond to this message.  You only have to
be decent and have a desire to take one small step in opposing bigotry.
Please add your name to this petition and forward it to as many people
as you can.

IMPORTANT:  Do not use the "Forward" utility in your
mail program. Instead, cut and paste this message onto a new page, add
your name to the bottom of the list, and email it out.
If you are the 25th, 50th, 75th, 100th, etc. person to sign this
petition, then also please forward this to American Airlines at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 

We, the undersigned, support your gay/lesbian rights policies and
commend you for your efforts in ending discrimination. Thank you
for
your dedication to such issues and please continue to remain active in
the struggle to end discrimination.
1.  Laura Markowitz
2.  Michael Shernoff
3.  Bruce Koff
4.  Mitchell Channon
5.  Randi Levin
6.  Kate Todd
7.  Caroline Jestin
8.  Paula Chu, Harwinton, CT
9.  Jack Hasegawa, Woodbridge, CT
10. Bill Howe, Glastonbury, CT
12. Ellen Ornato, Meriden, CT
13. Sharon Feldman Rowe, Dobbs Ferry, NY
14. Susan Reiter, NYC
15. Tom Savage, NYC
16. Hastings Wyman, Washington,DC
17. Charlie Mehler, Chicago, IL
18. John Birch, Oak Brook, IL
19. Phil Ross, San Francisco, CA
20. Jack Patrick McGowan
21. Asa DeMatteo, Ph.D., San Francisco, CA
22. Thomas J. Brady, M.D., FAPP, San Francisco, CA
23. Richard Clemence, Grass Valley, CA
24. John Cahill, San Francisco, CA
24. Melinda Hutchings, Sacramento, CA
25. Grace L. Blair, M.D., Diamond Springs, CA
26. Andrea J. Sirott, Berkeley, CA
27. Carmen Murray, San Jose, CA
28. Bernardo Antonio Gonzxlez, Middletown, CT
29. Noah Isenberg, Brooklyn, NY
30. Brett Wheeler, Washington, DC
31. Jeffrey Inslee, El Cerrito, CA
32. Peter Dahlin, El Cerrito, CA
33. Sue Lampson. Los Gatos, CA
34. Marylou McCall, Los Gatos, CA
35. Lori Cuesta, Mountain View, CA
36. Kelly Howard, Fremont, CA
37. Carmen Fewless, San Leandro, CA
38. Lynne Olivier, San Francisco
39. Robin Tremblay-McGaw, San Francisco, CA
40. Deena Zacharin, San Francisco, CA
41. Laurel Wigham, San Francisco, CA
42. John Beem, San Francisco, CA
43. Susan Riggs, Portland, OR
44. Jamie Meyers,Portland, OR
45. Janet Brandt, Portland, OR
46. Eva Gold, Portland OR
47. Nan Narboe
48. Daniel Berman MSW, Portland, OR
49. Stephen P. Samuels, Columbus, OH
50. Laurie S. Pascal, Boston, MA
51. Ross Pascal, Boston, MA
52. Roger Pascal. Evanston, IL
53. Ann Rae Heitland, Flagstaff, AZ
54. Lillian A. Santamaria, Flagstaff, AZ
55. Phyllis SantaMaria Gove, London, England, UK
56. Wendy Tobitt, Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England,UK
57. Mo Shapiro, Gayhurst, Milton Keynes, England UK
58. Sue Quilliam, Milton Keynes, England, UK
59.Suzie Hayman, Kendal, Cumbria, UK
60. Robert Durie, Blackrock, Dublin, Ireland
61. Karen Kiernan, Cabra, Dublin, Ireland
62. Ivana Bacik, Herbert Place, Dublin, Ireland
63.Catherine Morley, 19 Donore Road, Dublin, Ireland
64. Freda Donoghue, Donore Road, Dublin, Ireland
65. Wojtek Sokolowski, Baltimore, MD

[PEN-L:3101] Re: Aztecs

[Charles Brown]

Jim,

I always thought ( after Marx , Chapter 1, Vol. 1 of _Capital_) that technically money 
only exists in commodity exchange ? 

There is a large anthropological literature on primary cultural gift exchange, 
reciprocity, etc. as different than commodity exchange ( no expectation of repayment, 
symbolically rather than accountingly constituted etc.). See _Stone Age Economics_ by 
Marshall Sahlins; 'Essai sur le don' by Marcel Mauss.

I too recall reading Murra in my archeology class on Peru in about 1970.

Charles


>>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 11:51 AM >>
I don't see why wampum isn't money. It fits the usual definitions. The
difference is that the wampum functioned in social systems mostly oriented
toward producing use-values (C-M-C) whereas what we call money operates in
a social system oriented toward producing exchange-value (M-C-M) or
surplus-value (M-C-M', with M' > M). In different social systems, money
functions differently. 

BTW, J.V. Murra (who Louis cites) was one of my anthro. profs. more than 25
years ago. 

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

[PEN-L:3100] Re: Re: We are waiting

[Ellen T. Frank]

>Gerald Levy wrote (of the Daily Labor Report):
>
>>seriously, Dave: stop it!
>
Why would anyone object to Dave Richardson's amazingly useful reports?  I,
for one, don't have time to read every major paper every day and find lots
of interesting nuggets in the Daily Labor Reports.  Please keep them
coming, Dave!

Ellen Frank

[PEN-L:3099] Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

>yeah, Doug, why won't you just play along?  Louis understands you,
>loves you like a brother...
>
>angela

Oh please, can we cut out the "Doug Henwood groupie" garbage. It's bad
enough that I had to put up with this on LBO-Talk without it creeping into
PEN-L. Doug is a big boy and has to take responsibility for his politics. I
happen to have the highest regard for Doug's analysis of the functioning of
American capitalist system. His articles on the phenomenon of
"globalization" are classics.

But because he is very sharp in certain areas does not mean that he is an
expert on all areas. In particular, I don't think he has really taken the
trouble to get up to speed on third world issues. In all the years that
I've been reading LBO-Talk, there has been very little coverage of the
problems of the typical third world denizen, namely those who work the
land. If you go to his webpage, there are only 2 articles that are
addressed to non-imperialist areas: Mexico and East Asia. And in both
cases, they involve their role in the global economy as aspiring members of
the first tier nations.

If you want to get up to speed on these questions, you have to study all
those Monthly Review authors, from Paul Baran to Samir Amin. (Did anybody
catch my reference to him as Amin Samir in a previous post. That's the old
racism acting up again.)

Doug's omission of agrarian struggles, which largely defined the 1980s
(Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Mozambique, et.) is rooted in his theory,
which I am not sure that he is fully aware of. Doug should take the time
some day to really think through what he stands for. He'd be a much happier
camper. Doug is fascinated with capital--the big K. He likes to study its
motion in and out of all the various circuits, such as Wall Street banks
and multinational corporations. The problem is that nearly half the planet
lives outside this orbit. The peasants of Latin America, Asia and Africa
are largely outside the cash economy. If you go to Managua or Lima, you
will see the streets filled with peddlers living on the margins of the
capitalist economy. If you go into the forests, you will find tribes who
live the same way they lived a thousand years ago and whose only hope is
that they may live this way in the future. These "People without history"
do not find their way into LBO.





Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3096] Re: Re: selling Manhattan

[Charles Brown]

>>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 11:34 AM >>>
At 10:48 AM 2/9/99 -0500, Charles Brown wrote:
>Overall, I just wish the Europeans had had more respect for the indigenous
societies, because I think  our species would be better off with a wider
variety of cultures, and preservation of the knowledge and cultural
treasuries of the indigenous peoples. I would like to see the whole range
of human cultural types, modes of production , from history preserved so
that maybe even part of basic education would be for children to live and
learn them, reiterating cultural evolution , so to speak. There may have
been knowledge of many natural medicines, herbs and "spices", which are now
lost. Also, our gungho technological development regime could use some of
the Indian philosophy of ecological harmony. It is perhaps wishful thinking
now, but I would like to see more of a synthesis of the wisdoms of various
phases of human development, rather than obliteration of the socalled
primitive ways of life.
--snip---


Sounds like a great idea to me as well.  I just have one little problem,
who would live in those "reservations" of pre-modern life?  The
reservations as we know them may be tourist attractions, but they are also
breeding grounds for poverty and hopelessness.

Charles: They wouldn't be at all like the U.S. reservations, which are like 
concentration camps. In other words, if we didn't have capitalism, it would be 
possible to have huge areas of land that are more au naturelle. As far as who would 
live on these recovered areas, EVERYBODY would spend some time there. It would be a 
basic part of human education to learn the early modes of production first hand, not 
just in an anthropology class as well as learn the ultra-modern ways. The idea is that 
it is a myth that the indigenous way of life was nasty, brutish and short. Our bodies 
developed historically mostly under conditions of hunting and gathering , and 
gardening. It would be physically healthy to live in these modes some. 


Wojtek:
PS.  When I was in Mexico City I was surprised at the level of integration
of the pre-Columbian and European cultures.  For Mexicans, the history of
their state does not start with a decree signed by a few white
property-owning men but goes back to the Aztec times.  Mexicans (at least
those whom I met) see their national identity as a mixture of the Aztec and
the Spanish culture.
___

Charles: Yea, Aztec, Mixtec, Toltec, Zapotec, Olmec, Maya, etc, etc. I saw 
archeological sites preserved and displayed inside of subway stops when I was in 
Mexico City.

The Zapatista armed struggle going on right now is based in Mayan culture, Marxism and 
another theory I forgot, according to the representative I heard speak a few years ago.




Wojtek:
I see such integration, even if largely symbolic, a better way of
preserving the past, than relegating it to reservations, as practiced in
this country. 


Charles: You got that right. The British et al. did not mix with the Indians as much 
as the Spanish. I would say the British were more racist in that regard.


Wojtek
 BTW, how many Americans would describe their national
identity as a mixture of different European, Asian and Native cultures?
Based on what I've seen it is mostly "England, England ueber alles."
___

Charles: Your general point is correct. Of course, I am an AFRICAN-American ,and I 
have several different Indian bloodlines in my family. So, my national identity is a 
mixture.

Notice how Africa is often forgotten. See _The World and Africa_ by W.E.B. Dubois, on 
Africa at the bottom of the European racial scheme.

Charles

[PEN-L:3095] Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

>Is the whip used to force laborers to produce
>exchange value different from the one used to
>make them produce use-values?
>
>curious,
>mbs

No, it is the same whip. The question worth discussing, however, is the
impact of colonialism on Latin America. The Incan empire created use-values
that had benefit for their subjects, even if they were created under
duress. The Spanish colonizers created exchange value that benefited only
themselves. This is not a defense of feudalism. It is rather a statement
that there is no evil greater than imperialism, which Max Sawicky has been
seen flirting with from time to time.

Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3092] Re: Nigeria

[Doug Henwood]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>Doug, we have political differences that no amount of quoting in context or
>out of context will change.

You have an amazing skill at redefining what a debate is about when caught
with your pants down.

>You believe that capitalism has some
>progressive aspects, while I believe that it has none. That is what the
>debate is about.

Ok, so let's for now assume that's what The Debate is about. On your list,
Mark Jones quoted me saying that women who go to work in Mexican
maquiladoras find some degree of liberation from rural patriarchy in their
new lives, along with the exploitation and toxic waste that goes with the
job. I based that on an article by the excellent journalist Debbie Nathan
in The Nation and on research by the sociologist Leslie Salzinger.
Salzinger spent a year working in factories and talking to her fellow
workers. Mark, knowing better from his London perch what young Mexican
women workers think than Nathan and Salzinger do from their on-site
research, thought this an outrageous apology for imperialism. Me, I think
this is an example of just how contradictory capitalism is, even in Mexico
in the late 1990s. Another vignette from Mexico: our mutual cyberfriend
Zeynep spent a lot of time in Chiapas - visiting actual villages where
people live, and not just talking to the Zapatistas - in 1997. She told me
that women are expected not to speak when in the presence of men. Something
like that might make factory work look a bit more appealing, and village
life a little less so, than they would to, say, a computer programmer
sitting in a cubicle on a university campus in the United States.

Doug

[PEN-L:3089] Compounding Manhattan

[Tom Lehman]

Dear Pen-L,

There is a story in the Halliday&Resnick physics textbook that says, if
you applied compound interest to the 24 dollars or whatever the amount
was the American Indians sold Manhattan for to the Dutch---it would now
be worth the assessed value of New York City.

I'll dig this little gem out if anyone is interested.  :o)

Your email pal,

Tom L.

[PEN-L:3088] Re: Re: Re: Aztecs

[Charles Brown]

 

>>> Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/09 10:55>
Imperialism invests in an entirely
different manner in Africa than it does at home. In the colonies (now
neocolonies), it invests in roads, seaports, mining equipment, oil
refineries, fertilizers, tractors, etc. to the extent that is necessary to
expedite the removal of raw materials. In recent years it has also invested
heavily in assembly plants with all the latest equipment. Workers receive a
pittance wage, while the profits are returned to the mother country. This
is the story of Nike, etc.
_

Charles: It seems to me, that in the long run, the superprofitting in the colonies and 
neo-colonies has been the basis for avoidance of revolution in the main imperialist 
countries themselves, through redistributing some of the booty among the working 
classes therein.
_



Louis:
Andre G. Frank has examined this tendency and drawn the conclusion that
"classical" Marxism is the enemy, since it has often adapted to
imperialism. What he has in mind is the sort of Marxism that the Analytical
Marxists, Doug Henwood, the LM sect-cult and the Stalinists espouse. In
some ways, I sympathise with him. However, the one thing that Marxism does
offer is a historical materialism that can serve to sharpen our
understanding of how the system works and what direction it is moving in.
Armed with that understanding, we will be in a better position to overthrow
it and live like free human beings.
__

Charles: Classical Marxism, especially in the form of the Soviet Union, has been a 
main bulwark, directly and indirectly, for national liberation victories in colonial 
nations. Someone will give an example of something the Soviet Union or the Cuban 
Communist Party did that was "adapting to imperialism." Of course, it was not perfect, 
but no other school of thought or theory has been the basis for ANYWHERE NEAR the 
anti-imperialist struggle as classical Marxism and the Soviet Union. Just because we 
are in the down part of a political "long wave" doesn't mean the enormous 
anti-imperialist victories, starting with the Chinese Revolution right on through the 
Nicaraguan Revolution are now total failures or reversed. When the next round of 
revolutions start they will build on the achievements of the last round. I know of no 
Frankian based revolutionary movements.

Charles Brown

[PEN-L:3106] Re: Petition

[jf noonan]

On Tue, 9 Feb 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> American Airlines is a major sponsor to and supporter of groups like:
> GLADD, the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund,
> the AIDS Action Foundation, DIFFA, AmFAR, and scores of
> community-based groups representing gays and lesbians.  It is also the
> first airline to adopt a written non-discrimination policy covering
> sexual orientation in its employment practices.
> 



Uh, this is pretty old, I saw it last summer.  These things start
floating around the 'net and take on a life of their own.  

How about writing in solidarity with the pilots who are doing their
sick-out right now to protest American failing to live up to the
contract requiring them to pay the pilots at recently aquired Reno Air
the same that AA pilots are paid?



--

Joseph Noonan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

[PEN-L:3087] RE: Re: Aztecs

[Max Sawicky]

> Louis P. wrote: >>In general, the Aztecs and Incas ruled with a relatively
> light hand<<
>
> Brad deL emoted: >!<
>
> I think Marx makes the point somewhere in vol. I of CAPITAL that overtly
> forced labor (which the Incas organized) combined with commodity
> production
> (which the Spaniards brought) represents the worst of both. Inca-type
> forced labor was limited in its disgustingness by the fact that it only
> produced use-values, which are very hard to accumulate in most cases. On
> the other hand, the Spaniards' exploitation of Peruvian labor was aimed at
> producing exchange value, which has no limit.

Is the whip used to force laborers to produce
exchange value different from the one used to
make them produce use-values?

> . . .

curious,
mbs

[PEN-L:3083] Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

>I never said such a thing. I asked Jim to write a piece about the way
>American Indians live today. You've gone from caricaturing your opponents
>views to inventing them.
>
>Doug

What are you talking about? You told me this yourself. You also once asked
"how long we had to wait until the Indians were assimilated." I blew up at
you when you asked such a boneheaded question. It shocks me that you lack
even the most elementary self-awareness of your own political views. Doug,
you are almost always expressing the sort of "modernist" prejudices that
Jim Heartfield expresses, but with your typical hedging strategy. I suppose
that is the difference between a post-Trotskyite sectarian like him and a
cagey journalist like yourself.

Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3082] Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

Jim Devine:
>I think Marx makes the point somewhere in vol. I of CAPITAL that overtly
>forced labor (which the Incas organized) combined with commodity production
>(which the Spaniards brought) represents the worst of both. Inca-type
>forced labor was limited in its disgustingness by the fact that it only
>produced use-values, which are very hard to accumulate in most cases. On
>the other hand, the Spaniards' exploitation of Peruvian labor was aimed at
>producing exchange value, which has no limit. 

This is an exellent point. In the course of our discussions on
precapitalist societies, we have tended to efface the difference between
the underlying dynamics of each system. The Incas were certainly cruel, but
their cruelty had certain built-in limits. When you are about the business
of extracting tribute, you can be satisified by x amount of potteries,
woven textiles, crops, etc. When you are about the business of
commodity-circulation, there is no limit except what the market dictates.

This helps us to understand the question of wampum also. While it certainly
was used as money by the Indians, its use was analogous to the use of gold
in the middle ages. It had value and could be used in exchange, but
commodity-production had not yet become generalized.

I also probably overstated the case when I said that the Aztecs and Incas
ruled with a "relatively light touch". It would be far more accurate to
state that their repressiveness was characteristic of all tributory
societies. As long as subject peoples provided the required tribute, there
were no further obligations. In contrast, the Spanish colonial
administration turned Indians into slaves, who worked around the clock in
places like Potosi, Bolivia until the mines were exhausted and the Indians
were corpses.

Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3081] Re: Aztecs

[Doug Henwood]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>No, I got his point exactly. When Jim Craven was going to write something
>for LBO, Doug told him that he wasn't interested in all that 1492 stuff.

I never said such a thing. I asked Jim to write a piece about the way
American Indians live today. You've gone from caricaturing your opponents
views to inventing them.

Doug

[PEN-L:3079] Nigeria

[Louis Proyect]

Doug:
>Seeing the world in black and white makes writing polemic a lot easier, but
>it's not very helpful. I was reacting to your preposterous claim that
>Nigeria has seen "plenty of investment," which is why the phrase was in
>quotes. Nigeria has not had "plenty of investment," it's had too little and
>of a very distorted sort. Here's the full exchange. I especially like the
>way you forgot to quote the "It's been plundered" part.

Doug, we have political differences that no amount of quoting in context or
out of context will change. You believe that capitalism has some
progressive aspects, while I believe that it has none. That is what the
debate is about.


Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3078] Re: Re: Re: Re: Aztecs

[Doug Henwood]

Louis Proyect wrote:

>Another example of this is the bonkers Living Marxism sect in Great
>Britain, which has argued that the problem in Africa is some kind of benign
>neglect. In the past, capitalists would roll up their sleeves and build
>railroads, hydroelectric dams and mines, etc. But in recent years, because
>of the subversive efforts of groups like Greenpeace, the capitalists have
>been forced to retreat from their historic role. Campaigns to preserve the
>jungle and the natives in some kind of pristine theme-park purity has
>frustrated Wall Street's traditional money-making appetites. That is why
>Africa is suffering today, because the capitalists have gone home and taken
>their money with them. (Don't ask me to explain how "Marxists" can come up
>with such garbage.)
>
>Doug Henwood agrees with their analysis, but only by maybe 80 percent or
>so, based on his statement that:
>
>
>Capitalism is about money and capital, Nigeria has less of both than the UK
>or US, and imperialism is the reason. That lack of capital is reflected in
>bourgeois statistics. Therefore Nigeria has not had by any measure "plenty
>of investment."
>
>
>This analysis is absurd, since it is not grounded in history. "Bourgeois
>statistics" do not tell the story.

Seeing the world in black and white makes writing polemic a lot easier, but
it's not very helpful. I was reacting to your preposterous claim that
Nigeria has seen "plenty of investment," which is why the phrase was in
quotes. Nigeria has not had "plenty of investment," it's had too little and
of a very distorted sort. Here's the full exchange. I especially like the
way you forgot to quote the "It's been plundered" part.

>Louis Proyect wrote:
>
>>You don't seem to get the point I was making. Capitalist investment and
>>socialist investment are two different things. Jim effaces this difference,
>>because he believes in "modernization" a rather class-neutral term. All
>>your numbers about capital stock per worker hide more than they reveal. In
>>general, such naked spreadsheet type approaches to the problem tell us very
>>little. The kind of approach that is needed is the kind that Mandel took in
>>Marxist Economic Theory. You need to look at these things in their
>>totality, especially when we are writing about countries whose history
>>under direct colonialism shapes their current situation. To talk about
>>Nigeria requires talking about English rule, a daunting subject for an
>>email list, but essential.
>
>Of course you have to talk about English rule; who said you didn't? Just
>because I talked about capital stock? Why is your world so either/or?
>Capitalism is about money and capital, Nigeria has less of both than the UK
>or US, and imperialism is the reason. That lack of capital is reflected in
>bourgeois statistics. Therefore Nigeria has not had by any measure "plenty
>of investment." It's been plundered. Your reference to totality sounds just
>like Stanley Aronowitz refuting my criticism of his labor statistics.
>
>James Heartfield is too class-neutral about modernization for me too, but
>I'll bet that many if not most Nigerian socialists would prefer more
>investment, capitalist investment, to less. But maybe I'm wrong.


Doug

[PEN-L:3077] Re: Re: selling Manhattan

[sokol]

At 10:48 AM 2/9/99 -0500, Charles Brown wrote:
>Overall, I just wish the Europeans had had more respect for the indigenous
societies, because I think  our species would be better off with a wider
variety of cultures, and preservation of the knowledge and cultural
treasuries of the indigenous peoples. I would like to see the whole range
of human cultural types, modes of production , from history preserved so
that maybe even part of basic education would be for children to live and
learn them, reiterating cultural evolution , so to speak. There may have
been knowledge of many natural medicines, herbs and "spices", which are now
lost. Also, our gungho technological development regime could use some of
the Indian philosophy of ecological harmony. It is perhaps wishful thinking
now, but I would like to see more of a synthesis of the wisdoms of various
phases of human development, rather than obliteration of the socalled
primitive ways of life.
--snip---


Sounds like a great idea to me as well.  I just have one little problem,
who would live in those "reservations" of pre-modern life?  The
reservations as we know them may be tourist attractions, but they are also
breeding grounds for poverty and hopelessness.

PS.  When I was in Mexico City I was surprised at the level of integration
of the pre-Columbian and European cultures.  For Mexicans, the history of
their state does not start with a decree signed by a few white
property-owning men but goes back to the Aztec times.  Mexicans (at least
those whom I met) see their national identity as a mixture of the Aztec and
the Spanish culture.

I see such integration, even if largely symbolic, a better way of
preserving the past, than relegating it to reservations, as practiced in
this country.  BTW, how many Americans would describe their national
identity as a mixture of different European, Asian and Native cultures?
Based on what I've seen it is mostly "England, England ueber alles."

Regards,

Wojtek

[PEN-L:3076] Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

Wojtek:
>Lou, I think you missed his point.  The issue at hand is not deconstructing
>some popular myths (e.g. European benevolence) but formulating political
>and economic claims.

No, I got his point exactly. When Jim Craven was going to write something
for LBO, Doug told him that he wasn't interested in all that 1492 stuff.
Apparently neither are you.

>But that is certainly not the case with the grievance that Europeans were
>racist and greedy bastards who plundered, enslaved and destroyed
>indigenuous cultures some time ago.  Suppose that our European ancestors
>indeed were the worst of the worst.  So what?  What are we supposed to do
>about that other than featuring in bleeding-heart morality plays?  Sit down
>and whine? Attend a group psychotherapy session? Hang ourselves? Or perhaps
>return the land to its "rightful owners" and collectively board a boat
>heading back to Europe? Anything else?

What reactionary garbage. Right now I am in the middle of a debate on the
Marxism mailing-list with an LM supporter in New Zealand who argues that
Maori land-claims are reactionary. In the mid-1840s, millions of acres were
either swindled or taken at gun-point by settlers. The Maoris, after losing
their land, drifted into the cities and became redundant. They live like
American blacks, plagued by unemployment, drug addiction, alcoholism and
prostitution. Inspired by the American black nationalist movement of the
1960s--which Doug also hates--they organized a movement for
self-determination which prioritized returning these stolen lands.
Socialists must support these demands, just as they would support the
return of land to Africans who have been evicted from their land in South
Africa or Zimbabwe. The fact that Mandela or the Zimbabwean governments are
not addressing these just demands is a sign of their lack of revolutionary
fibre.

As far as the US is concerned, it is a Rush Limbaughite obfuscation to
frame the debate in terms of Europeans going back to Europe. Indians have
demanded that the US respect treaties that were signed in good faith in the
1800s, like the Treaty of Laramie, or renegotiate treaties that were forced
on the Indian at the point of a gun. As Jim Craven has pointed out often,
the modern bourgeois system rests on the inviolability of such property
rights. The capitalist system, as is typical, violates its own political
principles in its pursuit of profit. Another way of stating this is that
democracy and private property are in conflict.

The Wounded Knee occupation of the early 1970s was one of the most
important political protests of the decade. Furthermore, it was supported
by a majority of Americans. American Indian land claims are not directed at
middle-class suburbanites, as much as Rush Limbaugh would have you believe
it. They are directed against coal and uranium companies and are at the
leading edge of the anticapitalist movements. It never ceases to amaze me
that Marxists can not figure this out. I suppose there are material
interests that might explain this, just as they would explain the
corruption of the Second International on the eve of WWI.

Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3069] Re: Re: Aztecs

[Ricardo Duchesne]

In general, the Aztecs
>and Incas ruled with a relatively light hand
>
>Louis Proyect


!

ricardo:
My intuition is the tributary societies of the Americas, because they 
were still closer to chiefdoms, were more 
egalitarian (within) than those of China and India...I think if Frank 
had been less obsessed about commercial relations, he might have used 
the idea that there was a process of world accumulation since 3,000 BC 
as a way of arguing that the rise of  states has been a process of 
domination/extermination of bands, tribes and chiefdoms. This 
conflict between societies living at different stages of development 
is a much ignored but crucial one in history.

[PEN-L:3085] Re: Re: Re: Re: Ernest Mandel on long waves

[ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224]]

Date sent:  Mon, 08 Feb 1999 11:37:26 -0800
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From:   Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:[PEN-L:3035] Re: Re: Re: Ernest Mandel on long waves
Send reply to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Jim and Sam,

I think there is some confusion and misunderstanding about long 
wave/swing theory.  The term wave or swing was substituted for 
cycle precisely because of the debate over whether the process 
was sinusoidal (cyclical) or sigmoidal (series of  upswings followed 
by stagnations with different and non-endogeous causes).  As I 
understand Mandel, the upswing was induced by exogenous 
causes (technological change or more usually, war) while the 
stagnation phase was endogenous caused by the falling rate of 
profit a la Marx.
 
For the Schumpeterians, the upswing was caused by major 
innovations -- technological or market (e.g. imperialism/ change in 
labour process, etc.)  Others saw in it batches of invention 
accumulating until a critical mass was achieved at which the 
innovation of one brought a flood of new 
products/processes/technology unto the market promoting bursts 
of investment etc. (The  principle is that of the septic tank.)

Others (Forrester I think) approach it more, as I understand it, from 
the Sante Fe approach based on swings in capital formation, if I 
remember correctly, tied to long term infrastructure investment. (a 
kind of long term accelerator.)

Many of these are laid out in several issues of FUTURES Journal 
some years ago and collected in a book edited, if my memory 
serves me correctly, by Williamson.

However, I think the most useful variant of long swing theory is that 
developed by the French regulation school and the American 
Social Structures of Accumulation school, both of which have 
strong marxist underpinnings.  For statistical evidence see Gordon, 
Edwards and Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers or the Van 
Dijn volume, The Long Wave.  For a succinct statement of the 
SSA/ Marxian theory of "stages of accumulation", see David 
Gordon, "Stages of Accumulation and Long Economic Cycles" in 
T. Hopkins and I Wallerstein, eds, PROCESSES OF THE WORLD-
SYSTEM, Sage 1980.

Louis wonders why we spend our time and effort investigating such 
things.  Well, capitalism is a relationship that is in constant flux 
and unless we understand how and why it is changing, we will not 
be very effective in opposing it or countering its effects on people.  
After all, isn't that why Marx developed his whole theoretical 
analysis of the origin and the laws of motion of capitalism?

Paul
Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba

> At 10:07 AM 2/8/99 -0800, Sam P. wrote:
> >I don't know much about long wave theory, but from the summary accounts
> >I've read there is some empirical evidence for it. But, what exactly
> >hinges on the existence of long waves? Just the ability to explain and
> >predict economic growth?
> 
> As a non-believer in long waves, I guess I shouldn't answer this. But I
> will anyway. The usual long-wave argument is that we're starting a
> long-wave upturn because of one of the periodic technological revolutions
> is taking hold. This means that we'll enjoy more supply-side growth
> (increases in labor productivity) than in recent decades, even if we go
> into a demand-side depression in the near future (with the US joining most
> of the rest of the world in stagnation) and/or global warming destroys
> civilization.  The supply side should be booming even though people's lives
> are being disrupted and AIDS is killing large numbers in Thailand, India,
> and Africa. 
> 
> But while one could argue that there's empirical evidence for _past_ waves
> (mostly concerning price changes) that doesn't mean that the waves will
> continue in the future. Just because a clock is ticking now doesn't mean
> that it will tick forever; it could wind down or the batteries could die.
> And given the complexity of the economy and incomplete information about
> it, it's really unclear whether it's "ticking" or not. It's a little like
> those gestalt pictures: is it a picture of two people facing each other --
> or is it a goblet? But it's worse: we're seeing the gestalt picture through
> a dense fog. The picture might be a third thing, or nothing at all. Until
> we get a good theory for what's behind the perceived long waves, a good
> understanding of what's behind them, I think that long-wave thinking is
> deceptive, a snare and a delusion. 
> 
> It's true that there are forces like technology that develop out of human
> control, but once we understand them better, we might use that
> understanding (if we had the power) to end the wave-like effects that some
> see as resulting from perceived waves of technological change. Similarly,
> technology doesn't simply drop from the sky; it's not exogenous. It's a
> societal product and is thus affected by class relations and the like. (As
> Braverman argued

[PEN-L:3116] Re: Re: Aztecs

[Jim Devine]

>I always thought ( after Marx , Chapter 1, Vol. 1 of _Capital_) that
technically money only exists in commodity exchange ? 
>
>There is a large anthropological literature on primary cultural gift
exchange, reciprocity, etc. as different than commodity exchange ( no
expectation of repayment, symbolically rather than accountingly constituted
etc.). <

I was thinking about the use of wampum between tribes or bands. Marx talks
about how commodity exchange starts at the borders between communities. And
if commodity exchange is happening, so is commodity production.


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

[PEN-L:3075] Re: We are waiting

[Doug Henwood]

Gerald Levy wrote (of the Daily Labor Report):

>seriously, Dave: stop it!

No, Dave, don't.

Doug

[PEN-L:3074] Re: Re: Re: Aztecs

[sokol]

At 09:36 AM 2/9/99 -0500, Lou Proyect wrote:
>Doug, am I really supposed to answer this question? You have stated
>publicly that you never read anything more than  2 or 3 screens worth of
>text. I suspect that this is why many of the points I have made about these
>exact questions have not registered on you, since the articles that contain
>them often go on for 6 or 7 screens.


Lou, I think you missed his point.  The issue at hand is not deconstructing
some popular myths (e.g. European benevolence) but formulating political
and economic claims.

Grievances make sense only when they can be effectively redressed.  For
example, Marx claims that workers produce all the economic  value.  He then
formulates a grievance that capitalist institutions rob workers of the lion
share of that value through ownership of the means of production.  It
logically follows that to redress that grievance one must change the
ownership of the means of production. 

We can debate what the exact effects of changing property laws will be, but
it is certain that (i) the grievance in question logically implies a policy
goal, (ii) it is possible to devise a series of realistically attainable
measures to accomplish that goal, and (iii) once implemented, that policy
goal may effectively eliminate or reduce the problem identified in the
grievance.

But that is certainly not the case with the grievance that Europeans were
racist and greedy bastards who plundered, enslaved and destroyed
indigenuous cultures some time ago.  Suppose that our European ancestors
indeed were the worst of the worst.  So what?  What are we supposed to do
about that other than featuring in bleeding-heart morality plays?  Sit down
and whine? Attend a group psychotherapy session? Hang ourselves? Or perhaps
return the land to its "rightful owners" and collectively board a boat
heading back to Europe? Anything else?

Besides, that sort of grievance implying "indigenuous property rights"
sounds more reactionary than marxist to me.  Property rights are like the
hole in a bagel - they exist solely because they are circumscribed by
social-political instutions (or "superstructure").  Take that institutional
crust away, and the hole is irrevokably gone, it cannot be restored back,
although one can create a new one by molding a new crust.  Ditto for
property rights.

Regards,

Wojtek
>

[PEN-L:3073] Re: Re: Re: Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

Ricardo:
> This 
>conflict between societies living at different stages of development 
>is a much ignored but crucial one in history.

This really is one of the most important questions underlying the
differences between world-systems theorists like Frank and certain
"classical" Marxists. The Second International came into existence at a
time when imperialism and social Darwinism were at high tide. There is
little doubt that the Second International adapted to both the economic
reality of imperialism and the ideology that sprang up to justify it. Karl
Kautsky was heavily influenced by Herbert Spencer. His "Materialist
Conception of History" is filled with nonsense about the racial and
cultural differences between Europeans and "savages." Plekhanov merely
adapted Kautsky's approach for Russian conditions. His own "Materialist
Conception of History" is also riddled with social Darwinist nonsense.

The legacy of the Second International is still very much with us. In many
ways, the theoretical apparatus of Stalinism is merely a repackaging of the
Second International. Communist Parties throughout Latin America from the
1930s onward tended to view the continent's problem as "semifeudalism"
which must be replaced by capitalism, before socialism was even considered
as a possibility. This is the reason that the CP of Cuba supported Batista
in the 1940s.

You can find the same methodology in the Analytical Marxism school, most
especially in John Roemer who writes about the "civilizing" role of
capitalism in India as if we were still back in the 1850s. It is
astonishing that Marxists would even begin to entertain such possibilities
after all we've seen in the 20th century. Capitalism is a force for
decivilization.

Another example of this is the bonkers Living Marxism sect in Great
Britain, which has argued that the problem in Africa is some kind of benign
neglect. In the past, capitalists would roll up their sleeves and build
railroads, hydroelectric dams and mines, etc. But in recent years, because
of the subversive efforts of groups like Greenpeace, the capitalists have
been forced to retreat from their historic role. Campaigns to preserve the
jungle and the natives in some kind of pristine theme-park purity has
frustrated Wall Street's traditional money-making appetites. That is why
Africa is suffering today, because the capitalists have gone home and taken
their money with them. (Don't ask me to explain how "Marxists" can come up
with such garbage.)

Doug Henwood agrees with their analysis, but only by maybe 80 percent or
so, based on his statement that:


Capitalism is about money and capital, Nigeria has less of both than the UK
or US, and imperialism is the reason. That lack of capital is reflected in
bourgeois statistics. Therefore Nigeria has not had by any measure "plenty
of investment." 


This analysis is absurd, since it is not grounded in history. "Bourgeois
statistics" do not tell the story. What tells the story is the history of
the African continent that people like Amir Samin have written, just as
Andre G. Frank has written the story of Latin America. Capitalism has not
held back from investing in Nigeria. If we think that this is the problem,
then we are deluding ourselves. Imperialism invests in an entirely
different manner in Africa than it does at home. In the colonies (now
neocolonies), it invests in roads, seaports, mining equipment, oil
refineries, fertilizers, tractors, etc. to the extent that is necessary to
expedite the removal of raw materials. In recent years it has also invested
heavily in assembly plants with all the latest equipment. Workers receive a
pittance wage, while the profits are returned to the mother country. This
is the story of Nike, etc.

Investment in Great Britain or the United States has an entirely different
character. It is primarily intended to accumulate capital for the benefit
of the native ruling classes, who sometimes quarrel about what is the most
intelligent strategic direction. This is cause of one of the underlying
tensions between various Republicans and Democrats. But, all in all,
capitalist investment in the US, Japan and Western Europe have tended to
maximize their advantage in the world market, while doing just the opposite
in the third world.

Andre G. Frank has examined this tendency and drawn the conclusion that
"classical" Marxism is the enemy, since it has often adapted to
imperialism. What he has in mind is the sort of Marxism that the Analytical
Marxists, Doug Henwood, the LM sect-cult and the Stalinists espouse. In
some ways, I sympathise with him. However, the one thing that Marxism does
offer is a historical materialism that can serve to sharpen our
understanding of how the system works and what direction it is moving in.
Armed with that understanding, we will be in a better position to overthrow
it and live like free human beings.



Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3067] Re: Re: A World Economy 1400-1800?

[Ricardo Duchesne]

Date:  Mon, 08 Feb 1999 14:11:20 -0800
From:  Gar Lipow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Organization:  Freedom Train
To:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:   [PEN-L:3047] Re: A World Economy 1400-1800?


Gar Lipow wrote:
So you are saying that Europe accounted for 70% (more or less) of world trade, 
but Asia for 65% or so of world production? 
This does not seem a good argument for Europe being dominant. 

ricardo: Actually Frank's figure is that Asia accounted for 80% of 
world production in 1750, which makes your point even stronger. 
But, as you then point out, there is no discrepancy here since 
foreing trade as a % of  the GDP was still quite small during this 
whole period, that is, production was mainly for local consumption. 
So, the point you raise is important in that it shows another 
weakness in Frank's analysis, which is that he ignores, as he always has, 
both production for use *and*  local commerce, the volume and 
value of which was still higher than foreign trade through the 
fifteenth and eighteenth centuries.  Of course we still 
need to explain this 80% figure: did Asia manage to account for 80% 
of world production because it was more efficient? We will see later.

Gar Lipow:
Also, I note 
hat your figures are mainly from the end of the period under 
discussion. 

Ricardo: Yes, Gar, we need figures for the whole 1400-1800 period. 
The ones I posted were simply those I had easy acccess to (my 
university is divided between two campuses and I reside in the 
smaller one with the smaller library; plus a very early draft which 
am writing on the spot in pen-l).  Still, keep in mind that Frank's 
contention is that Asia was the center of the world economy right 
up to 1800.   

Gar Lipow:
Also, to put these figures in perspective you would have to account 
for what percent of world production trade represented. I
 occurs to me, 
that especially in the earlier part of the period, the vast majority of production 
must have for local consumption . Back in 1400 a great deal of production 
must have been outside of 
oney economies entirely -- produced for use, 
for payment as feudal dues, or for barter.

ricardo: Yes, and I can assure that once we measure international 
trade in relation to GDP, Frank's world system will look even 
smaller. Frank chooses to ignore this whole issue except for one 
instance where he notes that Japanese exports reached to 10% of its 
GNP in the 17th century (106). I will get to statistical significance 
of the colonial trade later on, which I do think played an important 
role in Europe's economy, but foreign trade really grows during 
the 19th century.

[PEN-L:3071] Re: selling Manhattan

[Charles Brown]

>>> "Rosser Jr, John Barkley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 02/08 6:28 PM >>>
Barkley:
Charles,We're getting close enough to a "meeting of the minds" 
here that are transactions might be almost not void.  Just 
a couple of points.
___

Charles: Sounds good to me.
__

Barkley:
One is that it may well be (I don't know) that the 
Dutch actually did not do anything that was unexpected of 
them by the Indians they dealt with.  The unexpected and 
unpleasant may have come later after the British displaced 
the Dutch.  After all, the northern border of Nieuw 
Amsterdam was Wall Street (named for the wall).  Broadway 
was the country road linking it to the Dutch village of 
Haarlem.  There was still plenty of land for the local 
Indians to do their thing on Manhatten, although perhaps 
the Dutch had already acted badly.  This is a reminder that 
sometimes Europeans attempted to deal fairly with the 
Indians only to have their agreements undercut and violated 
later by their descendents or others taking their place.  
Something similar happened in Pennsylvania I believe.
___
Charles: This may be. I don't think that the European invasion was uniformly 
purposeful viciousness, or that all Indian/European relations were European crimes. 
Neither the Europeans nor Indians understood exactly what was going on especially 
early on. I don't think that every ( or even any necessarily at sometimes) European 
had a conscious "genocidal"motive for their actions. That kind of creeped up on 
everybody.

One comment though: I don't know the specific traditions of the Manhattan Indians, but 
in general the attitude to the land was not that each plot was a commodity fungible 
with other plots. There are special or "sacred" spots that tie into the tradition, 
myths and culture.  So , possibly , they couldn't "do their thing" just anywhere. I 
don't know that there were old sacred spots within the area that the Dutch occupied, 
so this might not be a pertinent comment.
_

Barkley:
Probably the remaining major disagreement we have 
involves how the Indians determined rights of use of land 
among their respective tribes (I agree that they, by and 
large, did not have concepts of "property in land" like the 
Europeans).  I would contend that we lack evidence about 
much of what went on.  But where we do have evidence there 
certainly was intertribal warfare and some of it involved 
who could live and hunt where.  A major one of course 
involves the changes in who controlled the central valley 
of Mexico regarding which there are historical records.  
Periodically outside tribes would come in and conquer and 
take over, as did the Aztecs who came out of the north.  I 
know that near where I live about ten years before any 
Europeans arrived, there was a major battle between the 
Tuscaroras and the Shawnees over access to the Shenandoah 
Valley.  I seriously doubt that such things were as rare as 
you make them out to be.
__

Charles: Well, the Aztecs had a state. Most of the groups did not have states, i.e. 
standing bodies of armed personnel etc. By the way, I had a class on Mexican picture 
writing, and "read" some of the codices that tell the indigenous dynastic histories. 
Yes, the Colhua Mexica migrated from up North, founding Tenochtitlan on a spot where 
an eagle had a serpent in its mouth in the middle of a lake. At least , that's what I 
was told.

The general problem with concluding that , as in your example, the warfare was for 
taking land or territorial, is that all we have comes through Europeans who had a 
"state" conception that they may be "projecting" onto the situation. In other words, 
these Europeans , who are the primary sources for us on what happened, had no 
conception of a society where land is not territory or private property, so their 
interpretations are suspect. Plus, "ten years before any Europeans arrived" is still 
within a period when indirect "waves" of European disruption of the pristine 
circumstances may have occurred even before Europeans arrived on that direct scene.

Overall, I just wish the Europeans had had more respect for the indigenous societies, 
because I think  our species would be better off with a wider variety of cultures, and 
preservation of the knowledge and cultural treasuries of the indigenous peoples. I 
would like to see the whole range of human cultural types, modes of production , from 
history preserved so that maybe even part of basic education would be for children to 
live and learn them, reiterating cultural evolution , so to speak. There may have been 
knowledge of many natural medicines, herbs and "spices", which are now lost. Also, our 
gungho technological development regime could use some of the Indian philosophy of 
ecological harmony. It is perhaps wishful thinking now, but I would like to see more 
of a synthesis of the wisdoms of various phases of human development, rather than 
obliteration of the socalled primitive ways of life

[PEN-L:3070] BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

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--_=_NextPart_000_01BE5442.B76A97C0

BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1999

__The nation's economy kept humming along in January, adding 245,000 new
jobs, seasonally adjusted, while the unemployment rate remained unchanged
from December at 4.3 percent, according to a report from BLS.  January's
nonfarm payroll increase was on a par with the average job gains posted over
the last 12 months, and the unemployment rate has remained in the 4.3 to 4.5
percent range since April 1998.  Average hourly earnings of private sector
production or nonsupervisory workers were up by 6 cents in January, to
$13.04, the largest monthly increase since August. ...  (Daily Labor Report,
page D-1; BLS Commissioner Abraham's statement, page E-3).
__Unemployment rates among blacks and Hispanics fell last month to the
lowest levels since the federal government began tracking them in the early
1970s, as the nation's booming economy created more jobs than expected,
lifting many of the unemployed who have been left behind during other good
times. ...  (Washington Post, Feb. 6, page A1).  
__Despite freezing weather across much of the nation and a financial
meltdown in Brazil, the United States economy barreled ahead last month and
created a quarter of a million new jobs, twice what forecasters had
predicted.  And even with a heavy influx of workers into the labor force in
January, unemployment stayed at 4.3 percent - the lowest level in 28 years.
  (New York Times, Feb. 6, page B1).  
__The U.S. economy began 1999 on a strong note:  Unemployment stayed low,
wages and the number of jobs headed up, and manufacturing's slide began to
abate.  However, there are some signs that the galloping economy may begin
to slow to a more comfortable trot.  The index of aggregate weekly hours
worked was unchanged in January, at a seasonally adjusted 146.2.  But the
average hourly earnings of production or nonsupervisory workers on private
payrolls rose 0.5 percent, the largest monthly increase since August.  For
the year, average hourly and weekly wages rose by 4 percent and 3.1 percent,
respectively. ...  (Wall Street Journal, page A2).

The oil and natural gas industry has cut 24,415 jobs since oil prices
crashed in November 1997, and 17,000 more job losses appear imminent,
according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America. ...  (Daily
Labor Report, page A-9)_The United States oil industry stands to lose
more than 17,000 jobs by this summer if oil prices do not rise above $14 a
barrel over the next 6 months, an industry group reported (The New York
Times, February 6, page B2, in a Bloomberg News article).  .

Thanks to a strong economy and easily available mortgage money, sales of
existing homes reached a record 4.79 million units in 1998, a surprising 14
percent increase from 1997.  Sales of new homes topped 888,000 last year,
another record. ...  But last year "will be the high water mark for housing
for the next generation," predicts the chief economist at Regional Financial
Associations in West Chester, Pa., who sees home sales falling and home
price appreciation slowing in the years ahead.  He says so because the
nation's real estate markets move in tandem with demographics - and the key
demographic statistic to watch is household formations.  In the late 1990s,
the annual household formation rate has averaged a strong 1.3 million,
compared with average rates of just under one million in preceding years.
When times are good - as they have been for the past several years -
household formations pick up as children strike out on their own earlier and
that pesky roommate gets his own place. ...  But household formations will
slow over the next few years to an annual average of 1.1 million.  Some of
that slowdown comes from household formations borrowed from future years by
activity in the previous three years.  Baby boomers are at the age when they
have formed about as many households as they are likely to.  And "Baby bust"
Generation Xers, whose numbers are much smaller by comparison, now make up
the key household formation group. ...  In addition, home sales get a boost
when people move around.  But as the population gets older, it moves less.
  But in the end, whatever lull is in store for the house sector is
likely to last no more than 10 years. ...  (The Outlook column, page A1,
Wall Street Journal).

DUE OUT TOMORROW:  Productivity and Costs -- Fourth Quarter 1998
(Preliminary)

--_=_NextPart_000_01BE5442.B76A97C0

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AAoAKQA1AAIASwEBCYABACEAAABBRDVFOENFMDA5QzBEMjExODg4RTAwQzA0RjhDNzgzMQArBwEE
gAEAEQAAAEJMUyBEYWlseSBSZXBvcnQAkAUBDYAEAAICAAIAAQOQBgCIDQAAHEAAOQBA
bfC1QlS+AR4AcAABEQAAAEJMUyBEYWlseSBSZXBvcnQAAgFxAAEWAb5UQrSS
4Ixes8AJEdKIjgDAT4x4MQAAHgAxQAENUklDSEFSRFNPTl9

[PEN-L:3105] Re: long wave: post hoc ergo propter hoc

[Tom Walker]

>> 
>> (For a blueprint of the model send $1 trillion and S.A.S.E)

valis wrote,
>
>Are you sure the controversy isn't corrupting you, Tom?
>I built an LW generator from an old 45 turntable and a roll 
>of toilet paper.  Works fine.  Who's this Levy character 
>that thinks non-economists have no place here?!
>valis

Amazing! Did you also figure out the part about wrapping the roll of toilet
paper in silver mylar and projecting 35mm slides on it?

regards,

Tom Walker 

[PEN-L:3097] Re: RE: Re: Aztecs

[Brad De Long]

Re:
>
>Is the whip used to force laborers to produce
>exchange value different from the one used to
>make them produce use-values?
>
>> . . .
>
>curious,
>mbs

well, Louis P. does have a point.

Consider the comparison of Erich Honecker and Ferdinand Marcos. Erich
Honecker exploits the East German people, and manages to get some nice
dinners, a pretty big house, some servants, and... a deer park. That's the
most he gets out of them in the way of surplus value because he takes it
out of his people in use-values.

By contrast, Marcos gets... $3 billion. He can use the international
financial architecture to take it out of his people in exchange-values.

I think that the point is incomplete because it neglects the impact of the
social system on human productivity. Where labor power is effectively free
to the boss, the boss has no incentive to make sure that the labor power is
used productively.

Someone once wrote something about the bourgeoisie being a "most
revolutionary class" that awakened productive powers that no one before had
ever imagined slumbered in the lap of social labor. Capitalism gives you
higher productivity to go along with its higher rate of surplus value as
well. But if you are enslaved in the mines of Pitosi, capitalism is no
bargain. (Of course, if you have your heart torn out still beating in
Tenochtitlan, not-capitalism is no bargain.)


Brad DeLong

[PEN-L:3068] Re: Re: We are waiting

[Henry C.K. Liu]

I agree completely.  BLS provides micro data that are very useful to me.
Even reprints from the NY Times which I read in print everyday but sometimes miss
an article or two, and am glad to catch what I missed by seeing it on the list.
In the print media, there are many features in the newspapers that I read only
from time to time.  That does not mean I find the newspaper objectionable.  When
someone posts material on a list, it is more than just providing information, but
information with an attitude or opinion.
It implies that this item is important to the poster, either possitive or
negative. That makes the list interactive.  I tend to learn as much from posters
that I disagree with as those I agree.  They don't often change my mind, but I
don't find it objectonable.  I am always protected by the D button.

Henry C.K. Liu

Mathew Forstater wrote:

> I appreciate the BLS report and if it is discontinued from PEN-L, would like
> to arrange to receive it some other way.  But it seems it should be easy
> enough to delete for anyone not interested.  Also, it is usually not terribly
> long.  Mat

[PEN-L:3093] Re: RE: Re: Aztecs

[Jim Devine]

I wrote: >> I think Marx makes the point somewhere in vol. I of CAPITAL
that overtly forced labor (which the Incas organized) combined with
commodity production (which the Spaniards brought) represents the worst of
both. Inca-type forced labor was limited in its disgustingness by the fact
that it only produced use-values, which are very hard to accumulate in most
cases. On the other hand, the Spaniards' exploitation of Peruvian labor was
aimed at producing exchange value, which has no limit.

Max "mbs" Sawicky asks: >Is the whip used to force laborers to produce
exchange value different from the one used to make them produce use-values?<

The whip is the same; those who use whips on people (or even horses) are
being cruel. The whip should be kept only in museums. Not only capitalism
but the "tributary mode of production" (of which the Incas were an example)
should be opposed. What I was saying that the _role_ of the whip (like the
role of money) differs according to the social system in which it is applied. 

Or to talk about 1999, under capitalism, machinery is not just used to
increase the effectiveness of human labor; it is also used to control the
amount of labor done per hour of labor-power hired (the degree of effort or
the intensity of labor), in order to maximize the profits (and
surplus-value extraction) of the capitalist owner. In other social systems,
machinery is used for other purposes. In the old USSR system of
bureaucratic socialism (BS), machinery clearly wasn't used to maximize
worker effort (since people didn't work very hard). Under (democratic)
socialism, machinery would be used to increase the effectiveness of human
labor and would be used to control and increase the intensity of labor when
workers agreed democratically that it was a good idea. 

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

[PEN-L:3066] Re: Re: Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

At 09:12 PM 2/8/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Louis Proyect wrote:
>
>>The European invasion of the Americas, Africa and Asia destroyed the old
>>tributory societies and replaced them with commodity producing plantations
>>and mines that were completely destructive.
>
>Undeniably true. What does this mean for politics today?
>
>Doug

Doug, am I really supposed to answer this question? You have stated
publicly that you never read anything more than  2 or 3 screens worth of
text. I suspect that this is why many of the points I have made about these
exact questions have not registered on you, since the articles that contain
them often go on for 6 or 7 screens.

Instead of taking time and energy to reply to you on something you lack
sufficient motivation to read to its entirety, let me suggest some
readings, which would be much more useful than the crap you are immersed in
nowadays:

1) Eric Wolf, "Europe and the People without History"

2) Thomas Patterson, "Inventing Western Civilization"

3) Pierre Jalee, "Pillage of the Third World"

4) Walter Rodney, "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa"

5) Anything by Carlos Vilas

Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3094] Re: Re: We are waiting

[Michael Eisenscher]

I second this sentiment.  

Michael

At 09:32 AM 2/9/99 -0500, you wrote:
>I appreciate the BLS report and if it is discontinued from PEN-L, would like
>to arrange to receive it some other way.  But it seems it should be easy
>enough to delete for anyone not interested.  Also, it is usually not terribly
>long.  Mat

[PEN-L:3090] case study for intro micro: airwaves

[Peter Dorman]

Today's New York Times has an article that would provide a good case
study for an intro micro class on the topic of price allocation.  John
Pareles argues that the new low-power FM stations authorized by the FCC
should not be auctioned off to the highest bidder.  He has a lot to say
about "genrefication" of music, niche marketing, and the profit motive
that will appeal to students but which also challenges neoclassical
axioms in preference theory.

Peter Dorman

[PEN-L:3065] Re: We are waiting

[Mathew Forstater]

I appreciate the BLS report and if it is discontinued from PEN-L, would like
to arrange to receive it some other way.  But it seems it should be easy
enough to delete for anyone not interested.  Also, it is usually not terribly
long.  Mat

[PEN-L:3064] Re: Re: Aztecs

[Louis Proyect]

Brad deLong wrote:
>In general, the Aztecs
>>and Incas ruled with a relatively light hand
>>
>>Louis Proyect
>
>
>!

Anthropologist John Murra's article in the Peru Reader titled "Cloth,
Textile, and the Inca Empire" sets down the exact nature of the tributary
glue that held this civilization together. Subjects of the Incas had to
spend a portion of their year weaving fine cloth out of cotton. The
imperial army wore the clothing and when it conquered a new tribe, they
presented the victims with a new wardrobe! This helped to cement them
socially and soften the blow of defeat.

Other tributary forms of labor included farming, soldiering, and mining,
but it was spinning and weaving that occupied a central place. Clothing was
functional, since the Andean climate was bitterly cold for much of the
year. It also had esthetic and religious value. Puberty rites were the
occasion for presenting a young boy or girl with new clothes. Feathers were
an important part of clothing and one Spaniard reported on a warehouse that
contained 100,000 dried birds just for this purpose. The sacredness
attached to clothing persisted long after the fall of the Inca state. It
was common to strip Europeans of their clothing after a skirmish took
place. Most of all, clothing was a sign of status:

"Any commodity so highly valued is bound to acquire rank and class
connotations. The king had certain fabrics reserved for his use alone and
his shirts are reported to have been very delicate, embroidered with gold
and silver, ornamented with feathers, and sometimes made of such rare
fibers as bat hair. Morfia claims to have handled a royal garment so
delicately made that it fitted into the hollow of his hand.

"The main insignia of royalty was a red wool fringe which fell over the
king's forehead and was sewn onto his headdress. Kings were quite
fastidious and changed their clothing frequently. Morfia and Garcilaso tell
us that royalty gave away their discarded apparel, but Pedro Pizarro claims
to have seen hampers which contained all of Atawalpa's used clothing, along
with the bones and corn cobs he had gnawed on. This is credible as we know
from Pedro Sancho, another and independent witness of the invasion, that
the mummies of deceased kings kept "everything"--not only vessels used for
eating, but all hair, nail parings, and clothes."

The Inca state used coercion to draft spinners, weavers, shepherds,
soldiers and farmers into its vast productive machine. It also made
extensive use of census takers, tax collectors, messengers and clerks.
These skilled workers kept track of what was being produced, who was
producing it and how much was owed in terms of the payee and the payer.
Most importantly, there was a professional army that kept everybody in line.

Thomas C. Patterson's "The Inca Empire: The Formation and Disintegration of
a Pre-Capitalist State" provides a Marxist analysis of how the Incas ruled:

"The state had available a series of institutions and practices to ensure
the regular and systematic extraction of tribute from the peoples they
subjugated. This exploitation was backed up by the army, diplomacy,
coercion, and intimidation. The state used the up-to-date census
information to levy labor taxes on the subject populations and the
households that comprised them. It imposed two kinds of taxes. The first
was the mit'a, which consisted of a specific number of days of labor in the
army, in public works projects, or in personal service to the emperor or
various officials and agencies of the state. The other form of labor
taxation involved agricultural or pastoral work in fields appropriated by
the royal corporations, the state, or the state cult or in caring for the
herds of llamas and alpacas they pastured in the territory of their
subjects. The tax burden was apparently not equally distributed across the
various groups incorporated into the state. Greater demands were placed on
some accounting units than others in the same province, and the demands for
labor from frontier populations were less than those from groups in the
core areas of the state."

Patterson is unstinting in his portrayal of the Inca ruling elite. The
quest for power consumes them. They are either fighting with each other in
wars of succession as characters in a Shakespeare play do, or with outlying
tribes who resist assimilation. This unflattering portrait is a reaction,
one must suppose, to the tendency of "indigenists" to view Inca
civilization as enlightened and humane. It is one thing for an
archaeologist to admire their artifacts, but Patterson's sympathies are
with the people who were under the thumb. The odd thing about civilization
is that it takes societies with strictly defined divisions of labor to
produce museum quality artifacts. As Freud said, the purpose of
civilization is repression. Such divisions are inevitably the result of
having somebody pointing a gun or spear at you, either implicitly or
explicitly. 


Louis Proyect

(http://w

[PEN-L:3084] Re: We are waiting

[Sam Pawlett]

How do define an economist? A Phd? What about non-economists, like me, who are
subbed to Pen-l to learn from the economists? Perhaps you can set some
guidelines for a typical post should include. Better yet, why don't you lead
by example?

Sam Pawlett

Gerald Levy wrote:

> Barkley writes -- imploring me to write more for PEN-L:
>
> > We are waiting.
>
> You will have to continue to wait.
>
> What PEN-L suffers from is not the absence of posts. Quite the reverse. It
> is not uncommon for daily digests to be over 500K. I would guestimate that
> digests have average over 250K in recent months. This is _way_ too large
> for subscribers to be expected to read, engage, and seriously participate
> in. (NB: a recent check revealed that there has been in recent months a
> approx 20% reduction in subscribers).
>
> So, the volume is too large.
>
> Moreover, a lot of this volume is posted by just a few subscribers. For
> instance, it is not uncommon for individuals to post between 6-15 messages
> per day. It would seem that voluntary restraint (or if necessary a list
> requirement concerning the maximum # of posts/person/day) is needed.
>
> So, there are too many posts by too few subscribers.
>
> Moreover, too much of the content of posts has nothing to do of relevance
> for a "Progressive Economists Network". In fact, I would hazard to
> estimate that on this "economists" list, a majority of posts are written
> by non-economists.
>
> There's way too much spam.
>
> E.g. (yes, I have raised this issue before but it was blithely ignored):
> why is there a "daily labor report" for the US sent to a list which is
> supposedly international? (but which is, in fact, overwhelmingly dominated
> by subscribers from the US and Canada). Isn't there *some other way* that
> those who want the report can be sent it without burdening the rest of
> us? (seriously, Dave: stop it!)
>
> Then there are all of those reprints from _The New York Times_. You call
> that "discussion"?
>
> (Or long reprints from books without the author's permission and in
> violation of copyright laws).
>
> So, it is I who am waiting.
>
> Waiting for PEN to *do something* about the above problems.
>
> Thank you for raising this topic, Barkley.
>
> Jerry

[PEN-L:3063] Re: We are waiting

[Louis Proyect]

Gerry Levy:
>Moreover, too much of the content of posts has nothing to do of relevance
>for a "Progressive Economists Network". In fact, I would hazard to
>estimate that on this "economists" list, a majority of posts are written
>by non-economists. 
>
>There's way too much spam.

This is obviously a reference to me once again and I must take exception.
When I post to the Marxism list and PEN-L simultaneously, this is not spam.
Spam would be, for example, email sent promiscuously to hundreds of lists
about how to make $$$ in your spare time using your computer, or get free
access to hot sex websites.

When I send something to multiple lists, it is always something that is
carefully researched and written. I view the Internet as a serious
competitor to print media, which can only help to turn academic
publications into something more relevant to the lives of people outside
academia. I have been writing about indigenous societies for more than a
year. In point of fact, the main venue for these articles has been PEN-L
itself, which seems extremely relevant when you stop and think about it.
Precapitalist societies largely fall outside the venue of economics
departments and belong to anthropology, but this is largely a function of
academia's tendency to compartmentalize various fields.

Two of the articles I have posted to PEN-L have been reprinted in reputable
academic journals: Canadian Dimensions and Organization and Environment. I
was also asked to submit something to RRPE--a reply to David Harvey on
indigenous struggles--which is in the latest issue.

Your problem is that you have nothing to say. You are just trying to find
ways to provoke Doug or me into a flame war, but it won't work, Jery. Both
of us are above that kind of nonsense, as is Barkley, or anybody else who
used to waste this most valuable of resources. You are stuck in a
time-warp, from 3 or 4 years ago, when many of these left-wing mailing
lists were boiling over with personal feuds and psychodrama of one sort or
another. Everybody has moved on, except you.

Louis Proyect

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

[PEN-L:3112] Re: Re: We are waiting

[Stephen E Philion]

I agree. I certainly find the BLS report more intersting than Jery's
posts.  Steve

On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Mathew Forstater wrote:

> I appreciate the BLS report and if it is discontinued from PEN-L, would like
> to arrange to receive it some other way.  But it seems it should be easy
> enough to delete for anyone not interested.  Also, it is usually not terribly
> long.  Mat
> 
> 

[PEN-L:3080] Re: Aztecs

[Jim Devine]

Louis P. wrote: >>In general, the Aztecs and Incas ruled with a relatively
light hand<<

Brad deL emoted: >!<

I think Marx makes the point somewhere in vol. I of CAPITAL that overtly
forced labor (which the Incas organized) combined with commodity production
(which the Spaniards brought) represents the worst of both. Inca-type
forced labor was limited in its disgustingness by the fact that it only
produced use-values, which are very hard to accumulate in most cases. On
the other hand, the Spaniards' exploitation of Peruvian labor was aimed at
producing exchange value, which has no limit. 

In addition, the Spaniards' adaptation of the Inca tributary system lacked
the limits implied by the ethnic similarities of the exploiters and the
exploitees. The Spaniards also destroyed the Inca infrastructure, with
disastrous and often deadly results for the locals and, ironically, hurting
the Spaniards' own efforts to profit from Peru. 

I don't see why wampum isn't money. It fits the usual definitions. The
difference is that the wampum functioned in social systems mostly oriented
toward producing use-values (C-M-C) whereas what we call money operates in
a social system oriented toward producing exchange-value (M-C-M) or
surplus-value (M-C-M', with M' > M). In different social systems, money
functions differently. 

BTW, J.V. Murra (who Louis cites) was one of my anthro. profs. more than 25
years ago. 

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

[PEN-L:3072] Pen-l and the Daily Report

[Michael Perelman]

First of all, many, many people have told me that the Daily Report that Dave
posts is very valuable.  Yes, it is confined to the U.S.  I wish that we had
something comparable for Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Many people here are non-economists.  My original vision for pen-l would have
been more economic in nature, and our economics would have had more direct
political content.  I have come to appreciate the contributions of
non-economists to the list more and more over time.

I wish that we would hear from more of the lurkers.  I wish that we could make
our work more useful to political activists.  I wish .

But what the hell, you people certainly do make my day more interesting.  Keep
up the good work.
--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

[PEN-L:3061] Re: long wave: post hoc ergo propter hoc

[valis]

> I've built a model 
> of a long wave up cycle generator. 
> Since nothing out there matches my model, 
> we're not in an up cycle. Period.
> 
> (For a blueprint of the model send $1 trillion and S.A.S.E)

Are you sure the controversy isn't corrupting you, Tom?
I built an LW generator from an old 45 turntable and a roll 
of toilet paper.  Works fine.  Who's this Levy character 
that thinks non-economists have no place here?!
valis

[PEN-L:3060] We are waiting

[Gerald Levy]

Barkley writes -- imploring me to write more for PEN-L:

> We are waiting.

You will have to continue to wait. 

What PEN-L suffers from is not the absence of posts. Quite the reverse. It
is not uncommon for daily digests to be over 500K. I would guestimate that
digests have average over 250K in recent months. This is _way_ too large
for subscribers to be expected to read, engage, and seriously participate
in. (NB: a recent check revealed that there has been in recent months a
approx 20% reduction in subscribers).

So, the volume is too large.   

Moreover, a lot of this volume is posted by just a few subscribers. For
instance, it is not uncommon for individuals to post between 6-15 messages
per day. It would seem that voluntary restraint (or if necessary a list
requirement concerning the maximum # of posts/person/day) is needed.

So, there are too many posts by too few subscribers.

Moreover, too much of the content of posts has nothing to do of relevance
for a "Progressive Economists Network". In fact, I would hazard to
estimate that on this "economists" list, a majority of posts are written
by non-economists. 

There's way too much spam.

E.g. (yes, I have raised this issue before but it was blithely ignored):
why is there a "daily labor report" for the US sent to a list which is
supposedly international? (but which is, in fact, overwhelmingly dominated
by subscribers from the US and Canada). Isn't there *some other way* that
those who want the report can be sent it without burdening the rest of
us? (seriously, Dave: stop it!)

Then there are all of those reprints from _The New York Times_. You call
that "discussion"?

(Or long reprints from books without the author's permission and in
violation of copyright laws).

So, it is I who am waiting.

Waiting for PEN to *do something* about the above problems.

Thank you for raising this topic, Barkley.

Jerry

[PEN-L:3059] Re: Re: Re: The trouble with long waves

[Patrick Bond]

> From:  Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> What's your metric for long waves? Profit rates? In the U.S., 1982 was the
> bottom. But Japan has since fallen apart and Europe has long been in the
> mud. The 1990s? U.S. profit rates have flattened, Europe is still in the
> mud, as is Japan, and the Asian NICs fell apart. What's up, besides the
> NASDAQ?

We had Immanuel Wallerstein giving talks around South Africa the last 
fortnight, and aside from predicting the end of capitalism within the 
next half-century, he insisted a US crash in the coming period would 
have to proceed a K-cycle upturn...
 
***
Patrick Bond
51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094
Johannesburg, South Africa
phone:  (2711) 614-8088
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
office:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050
phone (o):  (2711)488-5917; fax:  (2711) 484-2729
email (o):  [EMAIL PROTECTED]