[PEN-L:6870] NATO does not target civilians.
This is true. Unfortunately it seems to be a logical truth not a matter of fact. Nothing could count as NATO targeting a civilian. For example, civilian employees of TV stations are part of the military apparatus and are thus not civilian targets. Chinese embassy employees are not targeted but killed by mistake. Other civilians killed by cluster bombs are collateral casualties but not targets. Those killed on a train crossing a railway bridge are not targetted but accidental casualties of an event where the bridge is a legitimate "military" target. Even coming back to finish off the bridge and the train is not targeting the train, the train just happens to be in the sights at the same time as the legitimate target. The same is the case with the slaughter of ethnic Albanians just recently. The village it is claimed was a legitimate military target. Even though there is no evidence of any military deaths but roughly 100 ethnic Albanians killed, they were not targets. Indeed NATO has made it clear that it will not flinch nor be daunted by the fact that the Serb military may be using Albanians as shields. NATO will be able to kill 10 Albanians for every 1 Serb soldier, claim that it does not target civilians and that His Excellency is to blame for all this. Indeed NATO could produce not just ethnic cleansing but mass killing of Albanians and blame it on the Serbs. Cheers, Ken Hanly
[PEN-L:6873] Re: Re: Re: RE: Old foggies/fogeys
I don't like to toot my own horn in public, but in this case maybe I should. I've been writing about socialism in a non-Marxian (and non-neoclassical) vein for almost 20 years (sporadically). My first piece was published in 1980 (a critique of Castoriadis' "On the Positive Content of Socialism"). My most recent was two years ago (in Legal Studies Journal). There's been a lot of evolution. In general, I don't claim any great originality, except insofar as I try translate into economics the arguments of my preferred brand of new leftists. FWIW, the central point of attack is the corporation; the goal is to socialize capital. State power in this model serves primarily an enabling, not instrumental role. (The state doesn't plan the economy, it establishes rules and provides resources that help communities, democratic enterprises, etc. planmore or less.) The hard part, for me, is not envisioning a delightful utopia (although, god knows, we need more of that these days), but thinking through how it can be approached through specific, viable, incremental measures. Without doing that, we have no way of determining whether it's attainable or not, unless we are willing to stake everything on a giant leap of faith. Surprise: most people aren't willing to do that. Peter Rob Schaap wrote: Just thought I'd clarify: I meant the issue has been dressed up as two 'opposites' neither of which we need necessarily embrace - but if we don't embrace 'em, our discourse isn't in the frame - the frame constituted for economic debate today is one of Hayekian freedom plus price as optimal communication versus some quasi-Stalinist bureaucratic system by which political and economic power is reputedly even more concentrated and allocation decisions are reputedly necessarily sub-optimal. There's gotta be room opened up beyond this pair, no? Is there any new literature on this question? Cheers, Rob. -- G'day all, Seems to me that the coherent critique we lefties have available to us has four other political problems, too: 1) it has easily been dressed up as the optimal but problematic 'hidden hand' versus the demonstrably spotty history of the social democratic state as corruptible and bureaucratic 'dead hand'; (2) it is difficult to sustain it empirically [although if it were right, I reckon the world would look a lot like it actually does]; (3) it suggests a revolutionary politics insofar as the differential ownership and control of the means of production must be stopped [which involves expropriation, which might involve coercion - but maybe another decade or two of mega-mergers and super-privatisation might see the whole lot of us in a very different relationship to the MoP], and [4] one critique doesn't necessarily lead to one programme [market socialists like Nove and Schweikert would disagree with councilists like Albert and Hahnel, who would disagree with Leninists - who are always bagging each other, like the Trots and the Stalinists]. As we know, these disagreements are often extremely intense and often definitively impossible to resolve. The defenders of the status quo need defend but one order, but progressives have the difficult job of proffering competing scenarios. Solidarity, the left's only realistic modus operandi, is actually a lot easier for the individualistic right - and an economic position that does not offer currently dominant notions of freedom and the individual, neat numbers, untraumatic programmes and a solid linear prescription, is pushing shit uphill. And then we have the problem of rhetorical association, eh? Everyone's convinced the leftie critique is the thin edge of the gulag archipelago wedge. We are nipped in the bud, because people are convinced the flower will be bureaucratic centralism, I think. And maybe we do need to do a little work on some of our common premises. Doug O. suggested the other day, for instance, that we could best keep the law of value by allowing for Schumpetarian moments of innovation and associated fleeting moments of non-labour-endowed value. Would such an approach, for instance, defeat widely accepted wholesale rebuttals of the law of value (eg. Stigler and Boulding)? Yours musing incoherently, Rob. -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:6859] RE: Old "foggies"/"fogeys" Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 07:06:33 -0700 The winnowing of the left from economics is hardly surprising if one steps back for a moment from who or what economics claims to be and do and considers instead how economics is historically situated as a discipline within the university and within society -- that is to say, if one takes a historical materialist view of economics. Economics is a sub-genre of history. It has appropriated to itself the authoritative posture of the natural sciences, from which position its objects of study -- the
[PEN-L:6874] Re: Re: Re: RE: Old foggies/fogeys
Just thought I'd clarify: I meant the issue has been dressed up as two 'opposites' neither of which we need necessarily embrace - but if we don't embrace 'em, our discourse isn't in the frame - the frame constituted for economic debate today is one of Hayekian freedom plus price as optimal communication versus some quasi-Stalinist bureaucratic system by which political and economic power is reputedly even more concentrated and allocation decisions are reputedly necessarily sub-optimal. There's gotta be room opened up beyond this pair, no? Is there any new literature on this question? Cheers, Rob. Hi all, There is some literature on this other than Albert Hahnel and Nove et al. It is not that fleshed out model but an attempt to direct the debate towards a third way between Hayek and Central Planning (especially last three articles): Devine, Pat 1988. Democracy and Economic Planning, Cambridge: Polity Press. Devine, Pat (1992). "Market Socialism or Participatory Planning?", Review of Radical Political Economy, 24:XX. Adaman, Fikret and Pat Devine (1994). "Socialist Renewal: Lessons from the 'Calculation' Debate", Studies in Political Economy, 43:63-77. Adaman, Fikret and Pat Devine (1996). "The Economic Calculation Debate: Lessons for Socialists", Cambridge Journal of Economics, 20:523-537. Adaman, Fikret and Pat Devine (1997). "On the Economic Theory of Socialism", New Left Review, 221:54-80. Also there is an interesting Marxian-Austrian debate that had occured in the pages of Rethinking Marxism: Burczak, Theodore (1996/97) "Socialism after Hayek." Rethinking Marxism 9 (3):1-18. Cullenberg, Stephen, David l. Prychitko, Peter Boettke and Theodore Burczak (1998) "Socialism, Capitalism, and the Labor Theory of Property: A Marxian-Austrian Dialogue" Rethinking Marxism 10 (2):65-105. good night, y. Yahya Mete Madra PhD Candidate Economics Department University of Massachusetts Amherst
[PEN-L:6875] Fwd: FYI: Chengdu Students' Apology (fwd)
Early this morning, students in ChengDu, a Southwest city of China, send an apology letter to President Clinton and the American people for the accident of burning down the US consulate in that city days ago: We, the students in ChengDu, hereby sincerely express our deep sorrow to the US goverment. We were participating a rubbish-cleaning campaign in the last few days, and wanted to burn some trash. But because of an outdated intellegence, we burned your consulate by mistake. The city map of Chendu of 1972 shows that your consulate location was a trash dump. This accident was caused by inaccurate information and false operation. Please trust us, it was not our intention to burn your consulate. We will look forward for a good relationship between us in the future. However, we still have to carry on our rubbish-cleaning campaign in a deeper order. we will try our best to avoid such accidents happen again, and we appologize for this terrible mistake, we are deeply sorry. This is abolutely a tragic mistake. Sincerely, Student representive html font size=3Chinese students have some humors. --xpbr br gt;Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 14:41:43 -0700br gt;From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Fabian Fang)br gt;Subject: FYI: Chengdu Students' Apologybr gt;To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]br gt;Organization: CSU Bakersfieldbr gt;X-Gateway: NASTA Gate 2.0 beta 3 for FirstClass(R)br gt;br gt;Early this morning, students in ChengDu, a Southwest city of China,br gt;send anbr gt;apology letter to President Clinton and the American people for thebr gt;accidentbr gt;of burning down the US consulate in that city days ago:br gt;br gt;We, the students in ChengDu, hereby sincerely express our deep sorrow tobr gt;the US goverment.nbsp; We were participating a rubbish-cleaning campaign inbr gt;thebr gt;last few days, and wanted to burn some trash.nbsp; But because of anbr gt;outdatedbr gt;intellegence, we burned your consulate by mistake.nbsp; The city map ofbr gt;Chendubr gt;of 1972 shows that your consulate location was a trash dump.nbsp; Thisbr gt;accidentbr gt;was caused by inaccurate information and false operation. Please trustbr gt;us, it was not our intention to burn your consulate.nbsp; We will lookbr gt;forwardbr gt;for a good relationship between us in the future.br gt;br gt;However, we still have to carry on our rubbish-cleaning campaign in abr gt;deeper order. we will try our best to avoid such accidents happen again,br gt;and we appologize for this terrible mistake, we are deeply sorry.nbsp; Thisbr gt;isbr gt;abolutely a tragic mistake.br gt;br gt;Sincerely,br gt;Student representivebr gt; /fontbr /html
[PEN-L:6876] Re: Gregor Gysi letter to Slobodan Milosevic
Louis, that's an interesting article, but is there any evidence that Hoxha actively sought to subvert Yugoslavia by arming ethnic Albanian Kosovars, propagandizing them, etc.? And did Tito and his successors respond in any way? I'll tell you the truth. I've been digging through the history of this Kosovo question through the 1980s pretty thoroughly and I have found no reference to this whatsoever. The only accusation that's been made is that Berisha, Hoxha's successor, armed the KLA. There is strong circumstantial evidence for this, but no smoking gun. Louis Proyect I posted message about above some weeks ago...I'm away from my materials but will try to remember to check source later... in the early 1980s, separatist Albanian Kosovars received support - including direct interventions - from Albania which used discontent in the region to discredit Yugoslavian economic and political innovations (nowhere in Europe were such far-ranging concessions to nationalist rights granted in a region considered so potentially separatist and Kosovo, as the poorest area with the highest unemployment rate, received disproportionate investment and assistance)... Michael Hoover
[PEN-L:6878] Yeltsin is a US President?
Hi folks, This is a funny misprint, originally from Agence France Presse. It seems Boris Yeltsin is identified as a US President? The mistake is ironic, but at the same time not very surprising, because the discussion is about the impeachment of a President. In solidarity, Greg. -- Washington "Pleased" Russian Law Respected in Duma Vote WASHINGTON, May. 16, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) The White House said Saturday it was pleased Russia's lower house of parliament respected the constitution during impeachment proceedings against US President Boris Yeltsin, but shied away from commenting on the vote's outcome. "The impeachment vote is an internal Russian political matter, but we are pleased constitutional procedures were respected," National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer told AFP. "We look forward to working in the coming days with the Russian leadership and Duma on a full range of international issues, including our joint efforts on Kosovo," he added. The Russian Duma voted down an effort to impeach Yeltsin, rejecting all five charges against him. The impeachment charges blamed Yeltsin for the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the war in Chechnya and the armed assault on parliament in 1993. He was also charged with ruining the army and with committing "genocide" against the Russian people. ( (c) 1999 Agence France Presse)
[PEN-L:6879] RE: Old foggies/fogeys
Patrick Bond wrote: Things are rough all over. Was reading these messages about radical economists who lose their sense of praxis and it reminded me of the editorial from the third issue of our SA journal "debate" a couple of years ago, in a special issue entitled "Intellectuals in Retreat": . . . [etc.] I read Patrick's message with its excerpt from the "debate" editorial after meditating on the Eighteenth Brumaire. The transition was seemless. Allow me to retrace my steps . . . I was responding to Rob Schaap's point about how "the issue has been dressed up" and his question about new literature. What I wanted/started to say is that the "new literature" awaits the insurrection that will blast history out of its stale continuum. I went back to the Brumaire to review Marx's lines about how the living "conjure up the spirits of the past" and "borrow from them names, battle slogans and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language." I had been thinking about Zimmerwald and Serbia and Social Democracy: the first world war as tragedy, the NATO action as . . . well, you know the rest. But I hate to cite out of context without assuring myself that the allusion means, in context, what I think it means. So I skimmed through the Eighteen Brumaire and was jolted by two other passages: one on the social revolution of the 19th century and the other on Social-Democracy. These are, like the tragedy/farce passage, famous passages. With due regard to the irony of using the expressions, the passages are timeless, priceless. On the social revolution: "The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content -- here the content goes beyond the phrase." On social-democracy: "The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent." regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:6882] Re: Re: Re: RE: Old foggies/fogeys
Sam, Actually, increasingly it is the case that the students admitted into the top econ grad programs are math undergrad majors. Much preferred as a major to econ which is viewed as being taught at the undergrad level in a much too "watered down" (non-math) fashion. Plus, one might have gone to one of those undergrad institutions with a bunch of leftover lefty old fogies, :-). Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: S Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Saturday, May 15, 1999 5:20 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6865] Re: Re: RE: Old "foggies"/"fogeys" Peter Dorman wrote: I don't think this is a useful analysis, for two reasons. 1. It assumes a stark opposition between neoclassical economics and Marxism, with neither overlap nor third alternatives. This doesn't describe the actual political/ideological/methodological situation within economics, either now or in the past. (It sure doesn't describe me.) 2. It's use of ideology critique (explanation of the hegemony of certain ideas according to the interests they reflect) is too abstract. The economics profession is an institution with its own internal structures of power and influence. True, it is connected to the outside world of "real" economic and political domination -- but in specific ways that intersect with its own institutions. One has to look at the role of soft money, the NBER, the agendas set by government, and so on. Even so, I'm not sure we have a good explanation for the sheer intellectual arrogance displayed by mainstream economics. It is more intense than one finds in other fields, and academics who are not economists generally find it objectionable. Incidentally, the fetishism of technique that so many on this list complain about is not specific to economics. It seemed to me when studying undergraduate economics that many economists were just looking for an excuse to do mathematics. That's cool if that's what you want to do, but why not just walk over to the Math Dpt. and do the real thing? Why waste the time of young undergrads enrolled in Econ courses who want to learn how actual economies work in the real world? The Micro courses I took were basically a repetition of the calculus courses. The hegemonic discourse in Economics like other disciplines has a lot to do with the state of the class struggle in the real world.You know, the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class. When Capital was on the defensive, there were a lot more rads teaching, more job opportunity's for them and more opportunity's to teach the really interesting stuff like classical political economy and economic history. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:6883] Re: RE: Old foggies/fogeys
The first is one of Marx' finest passages, justly famous. The second is an example of the tendentious and invidious argumentation that has soured his reputation. Social democracy, whether you like it or not, has always been the main form of working class political advocacy within capitalism. Shopkeepers and professionals support it sometimes, oppose it other times, but it always finds its broadest support among workers. There is a huge empirical literature on this. And it wasn't so different in Marx' day. One of the many fine sections of "The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract" by Atiyah details the close connection in 19th c. England between the extension of the franchise and the emergence of welfare statism. Incidentally, "petit bourgeois" slides from sociology into smear at the hands of Marx and his followers. It is difficult to hear this phrase today without thinking of the blood that has been spilled in its name. Peter Tom Walker wrote: So I skimmed through the Eighteen Brumaire and was jolted by two other passages: one on the social revolution of the 19th century and the other on Social-Democracy. These are, like the tragedy/farce passage, famous passages. With due regard to the irony of using the expressions, the passages are timeless, priceless. On the social revolution: "The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content -- here the content goes beyond the phrase." On social-democracy: "The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent." regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:6884] Re: Re: military euro
Bark, I've heard the figure "one million displacements" tossed around regarding Turkey and the Kurds. Can you or anyone else verify? And what does displacement mean in this context? Were they expelled through terror the way the ethnic Albanians were, or did they pick up and leave because the fighting was getting too close? Peter "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Well, after all the statements that have been made that implicitly or explicitly equate the situation of the Kurds with that of the Albanian Kosovars, perhaps it is worth keeping in mind some differences. Certainly the Turks have oppressed the Kurds very severely. But, I have not read of mass expulsions in the thousands or the burning of hundreds of villages containing Kurds. This is going on right now in Kosovo-Metohija. Barkley Rosser
[PEN-L:6885] Re: Re: Re: military euro
Peter Dorman wrote: Bark, I've heard the figure "one million displacements" tossed around regarding Turkey and the Kurds. Can you or anyone else verify? And what does displacement mean in this context? Were they expelled through terror the way the ethnic Albanians were, or did they pick up and leave because the fighting was getting too close? Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/hrw/worldreport99/europe/turkey.html: "Five provinces in southeastern Turkey-where an armed conflict between security forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has raged since 1984, resulting in the deaths of approximately 35,000 people, mostly civilians, and the forced depopulation of thousands of villages and hamlets-remained under a state of emergency. There was little change in six neighboring provinces-provinces that had previously been under emergency rule-because extraordinary measures continued to give state-appointed governors extended and restrictive powers. Despite government promises to compensate villagers, little effort has been made to facilitate the return of displaced persons to their homes in the southeast or to compensate them for the destruction and loss of their property." UN High Commissioner for Refugees http://www.unhcr.ch/world/euro/turkey.htm: "The government estimates that the ongoing conflict in southeast Turkey has created an 350,000 internally displaced people, many of whom live in shanty towns at the outskirts of urban areas." If the Turkish government says 350,000 Doug
[PEN-L:6887] RE: Old foggies/fogeys
Peter Dorman wrote: The first is one of Marx' finest passages, justly famous. The second is an example of the tendentious and invidious argumentation that has soured his reputation. Social democracy, whether you like it or not, has always been the main form of working class political advocacy within capitalism. Shopkeepers and professionals support it sometimes, oppose it other times, but it always finds its broadest support among workers. There is a huge empirical literature on this. And it wasn't so different in Marx' day. One of the many fine sections of "The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract" by Atiyah details the close connection in 19th c. England between the extension of the franchise and the emergence of welfare statism. Incidentally, "petit bourgeois" slides from sociology into smear at the hands of Marx and his followers. It is difficult to hear this phrase today without thinking of the blood that has been spilled in its name. Here's where context is s important. The second passage follows Marx's discussion of the suppression of the June insurrection of the Paris proletariat (1848), which, according to Marx, resulted in the butchering -- after the insurrection was crushed -- of 3,000 participants and the expulsion of 15,000 more. Unless you're saying that as part of his "slide into smear", Marx fabricated his account of the atrocities and the participation of the political representatives of the petit bourgeoisie in the alliance against the workers, the spilling of blood in this instance was of workers blood and it was with the approval of the petit bourgeoisie. Or are you saying Marx should have taken a "more balanced historical perspective" on the issue? I'll take the risk of being accused of "quoting scripture" or of Leninism and quote Lenin, not because I'm a Leninist or give any exordinate authority to Lenin's argument, but simply to show that the argument about the "mass support" of social democracy is not a new one. "One of the most common sophistries of Kautskyism is its reference to the 'masses'. We do not want, they say, to break away from the masses and mass organisations! But just think how Engels put the question. In the nineteenth century the 'mass organisations' of the English trade unions were on the side of the bourgeois labour party. Marx and Engels did not reconcile themselves to it on this ground; they exposed it. They did not forget, firstly, that the trade union organisations directly embraced a minority of the proletariat. In England then, as in Germany now, not more than one-fifth of the proletariat was organised. No one can seriously think it possible to organise the majority of the proletariat under capitalism. Secondly -- and this is the main point -- it is not so much a question of the size of an organisation, as of the real, objective significance of its policy: does its policy represent the masses, does it serve them, i.e., does it aim at their liberation from capitalism, or does it represent the interests of the minority, the minority's reconciliation with capitalism? The latter was true of England in the nineteenth century, and it is true of Germany, etc., now. "Engels draws a distinction between the 'bourgeois labour party' of the old trade unions -- the privileged minority -- and the 'lowest mass', the real majority, and appeals to the latter, who are not infected by 'bourgeois respectability'. This is the essence of Marxist tactics!" from IMPERIALISM AND THE SPLIT IN SOCIALISM http://www.ex.ac.uk/Projects/meia/lenin/Archive/1916-iss.htm Tom Walker wrote: So I skimmed through the Eighteen Brumaire and was jolted by two other passages: one on the social revolution of the 19th century and the other on Social-Democracy. These are, like the tragedy/farce passage, famous passages. With due regard to the irony of using the expressions, the passages are timeless, priceless. On the social revolution: "The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content -- here the content goes beyond the phrase." On social-democracy: "The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic
[PEN-L:6888] Re: Re: Re: Re: military euro
I would note that the Turks have not gotten off scot-free from their repression of the Kurds. It is one of the reasons, although anti-Muslim prejudice is another one, for why Turkey was refused admittance to the EU, indeed refused even to be put on the waiting list. This has led to considerable resentment in Turkey, surprise surprise. Of course the US continues to barely bat an eyelash and provides Turkey with substantial military aid, along with all kinds of approval due to its continuing membership in NATO. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, May 16, 1999 7:08 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6885] Re: Re: Re: "military euro" Peter Dorman wrote: Bark, I've heard the figure "one million displacements" tossed around regarding Turkey and the Kurds. Can you or anyone else verify? And what does displacement mean in this context? Were they expelled through terror the way the ethnic Albanians were, or did they pick up and leave because the fighting was getting too close? Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/hrw/worldreport99/europe/turkey.html: "Five provinces in southeastern Turkey-where an armed conflict between security forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has raged since 1984, resulting in the deaths of approximately 35,000 people, mostly civilians, and the forced depopulation of thousands of villages and hamlets-remained under a state of emergency. There was little change in six neighboring provinces-provinces that had previously been under emergency rule-because extraordinary measures continued to give state-appointed governors extended and restrictive powers. Despite government promises to compensate villagers, little effort has been made to facilitate the return of displaced persons to their homes in the southeast or to compensate them for the destruction and loss of their property." UN High Commissioner for Refugees http://www.unhcr.ch/world/euro/turkey.htm: "The government estimates that the ongoing conflict in southeast Turkey has created an 350,000 internally displaced people, many of whom live in shanty towns at the outskirts of urban areas." If the Turkish government says 350,000 Doug
[PEN-L:6891] Re: Re: Re: military euro
Peter, I don't know. Obviously whatever the number is, it has a) happened over a much longer time than the more than a million Albanian Kosovars who have allegedly been "displaced" within the last two months, and b) I doubt those people have been expelled from Turkey, or most of them at least, again in contrast to the 700,000 or so Albanian Kosovars who have had that joyful experience in the last two months. What has happened to the Kurds has been pretty nasty, but it has been going on for a long time and without the full scale of horrific results that have happened in a very short time in Kosovo-Metohija. Nevertheless, the Turks should stop it now, whatever it is exactly. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, May 16, 1999 6:36 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6884] Re: Re: "military euro" Bark, I've heard the figure "one million displacements" tossed around regarding Turkey and the Kurds. Can you or anyone else verify? And what does displacement mean in this context? Were they expelled through terror the way the ethnic Albanians were, or did they pick up and leave because the fighting was getting too close? Peter "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Well, after all the statements that have been made that implicitly or explicitly equate the situation of the Kurds with that of the Albanian Kosovars, perhaps it is worth keeping in mind some differences. Certainly the Turks have oppressed the Kurds very severely. But, I have not read of mass expulsions in the thousands or the burning of hundreds of villages containing Kurds. This is going on right now in Kosovo-Metohija. Barkley Rosser
[PEN-L:6892] RE: Old foggies/fogeys
By the way and for the record, I consider myself a déclassé petit bourgeois radical democrat. I suspect that a large part of Marx's and Lenin's rhetorical rancour towards the petit-bourgeois and social-democracy reflected frustration at the impossibility of ridding themselves of what they (in my view, correctly) perceived as an ambivalent and potentially treacherous class subjectivity. You can take the boy out of the country (class) but you can't take the country out of the boy. This is not to romanticize working class folks as 'noble savages', simply because some of them may have had less opportunity to be opportunists. Perhaps the most non-pejorative way of putting it would be to say that class society is predicated on treachery. Those who would deny their own potential for betrayal probably carry a dagger in their backpack just in case they change their mind. Barkley Rosser wrote: I think it would help if people did not use the pejorative "petty bourgeois" which is inaccurate and not in Marx in the original and, in fact, just plain wrong. It sounds like that when spoken, but the actual term is "petit bourgeois" which is French for "small" (or "little") bourgeois to be contrasted with the "grand bourgeois" or "big" (not "grand" in English) bourgeois. This gives the accurate meaning and sense of this term without the ridiculously invidious use of "petty," which I agree with Peter Dorman has been horribly misused by many people. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:6890] RE: Old foggies/fogeys
This is a petit detail but the usage of 'petty bourgeoisie' was from a 1935 English translation used by Progress Publishers in old Moscow editions. As for Marx's attitute toward the P.B.s, perhaps the following sentence gives the best flavour of his overall tone: "No party exaggerates its powers more than the democrats [the Mountain, party of the p.b.], none deludes itself more irresponsibly over the situation." Barkley Rosser wrote: I think it would help if people did not use the pejorative "petty bourgeois" which is inaccurate and not in Marx in the original and, in fact, just plain wrong. It sounds like that when spoken, but the actual term is "petit bourgeois" which is French for "small" (or "little") bourgeois to be contrasted with the "grand bourgeois" or "big" (not "grand" in English) bourgeois. This gives the accurate meaning and sense of this term without the ridiculously invidious use of "petty," which I agree with Peter Dorman has been horribly misused by many people. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:6889] Re: Re: Re: RE: Old foggies/fogeys
Actually, a more accurate translation of "grand bourgeois" would be "great bourgeois," but "big" is not too far off either, and they certainly are what is contrasted with the "petit bourgeois." Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, May 16, 1999 7:54 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6886] Re: Re: RE: Old "foggies"/"fogeys" I think it would help if people did not use the pejorative "petty bourgeois" which is inaccurate and not in Marx in the original and, in fact, just plain wrong. It sounds like that when spoken, but the actual term is "petit bourgeois" which is French for "small" (or "little") bourgeois to be contrasted with the "grand bourgeois" or "big" (not "grand" in English) bourgeois. This gives the accurate meaning and sense of this term without the ridiculously invidious use of "petty," which I agree with Peter Dorman has been horribly misused by many people. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, May 16, 1999 6:30 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6883] Re: RE: Old "foggies"/"fogeys" The first is one of Marx' finest passages, justly famous. The second is an example of the tendentious and invidious argumentation that has soured his reputation. Social democracy, whether you like it or not, has always been the main form of working class political advocacy within capitalism. Shopkeepers and professionals support it sometimes, oppose it other times, but it always finds its broadest support among workers. There is a huge empirical literature on this. And it wasn't so different in Marx' day. One of the many fine sections of "The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract" by Atiyah details the close connection in 19th c. England between the extension of the franchise and the emergence of welfare statism. Incidentally, "petit bourgeois" slides from sociology into smear at the hands of Marx and his followers. It is difficult to hear this phrase today without thinking of the blood that has been spilled in its name. Peter Tom Walker wrote: So I skimmed through the Eighteen Brumaire and was jolted by two other passages: one on the social revolution of the 19th century and the other on Social-Democracy. These are, like the tragedy/farce passage, famous passages. With due regard to the irony of using the expressions, the passages are timeless, priceless. On the social revolution: "The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content -- here the content goes beyond the phrase." On social-democracy: "The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent." regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:6886] Re: Re: RE: Old foggies/fogeys
I think it would help if people did not use the pejorative "petty bourgeois" which is inaccurate and not in Marx in the original and, in fact, just plain wrong. It sounds like that when spoken, but the actual term is "petit bourgeois" which is French for "small" (or "little") bourgeois to be contrasted with the "grand bourgeois" or "big" (not "grand" in English) bourgeois. This gives the accurate meaning and sense of this term without the ridiculously invidious use of "petty," which I agree with Peter Dorman has been horribly misused by many people. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, May 16, 1999 6:30 PM Subject: [PEN-L:6883] Re: RE: Old "foggies"/"fogeys" The first is one of Marx' finest passages, justly famous. The second is an example of the tendentious and invidious argumentation that has soured his reputation. Social democracy, whether you like it or not, has always been the main form of working class political advocacy within capitalism. Shopkeepers and professionals support it sometimes, oppose it other times, but it always finds its broadest support among workers. There is a huge empirical literature on this. And it wasn't so different in Marx' day. One of the many fine sections of "The Rise and Fall of Freedom of Contract" by Atiyah details the close connection in 19th c. England between the extension of the franchise and the emergence of welfare statism. Incidentally, "petit bourgeois" slides from sociology into smear at the hands of Marx and his followers. It is difficult to hear this phrase today without thinking of the blood that has been spilled in its name. Peter Tom Walker wrote: So I skimmed through the Eighteen Brumaire and was jolted by two other passages: one on the social revolution of the 19th century and the other on Social-Democracy. These are, like the tragedy/farce passage, famous passages. With due regard to the irony of using the expressions, the passages are timeless, priceless. On the social revolution: "The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content -- here the content goes beyond the phrase." On social-democracy: "The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent." regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
[PEN-L:6881] Re: military euro
Well, after all the statements that have been made that implicitly or explicitly equate the situation of the Kurds with that of the Albanian Kosovars, perhaps it is worth keeping in mind some differences. Certainly the Turks have oppressed the Kurds very severely. But, I have not read of mass expulsions in the thousands or the burning of hundreds of villages containing Kurds. This is going on right now in Kosovo-Metohija. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Saturday, May 15, 1999 11:26 AM Subject: [PEN-L:6860] "military euro" "... The answer to the first question [of why the US/NATO is attacking Serbia rather than Turkey etc.] is that the war is being conduced for reasons of state and not primarily for human rights The reasons of state appears to be the consolidation of Europeans and Americans as a global police role outside the United Nations. As a German political scientist crowed, the Balkan war can be a 'military euro,' a unifying blood equivalent of the single European currency." -- Tom Hayden, "The Liberals' Folly," THE NATION, May 24, 1999, p. 5. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html Bombing DESTROYS human rights. US/NATO out of Serbia now!
[PEN-L:6880] Re: With Malice Toward None - American Style
Henry, Just for the record, I think that it was very appropriate for the United States leaders to apologize to China for this appalling bombing. I also think the US should pay for the damages and pay the families of the dead as well. While I'm being free with the taxpayers' money, I am also appalled at the Congress' decision not to compensate the families of those killed in the Italian gondola incident. There simply is no defense for any of this arrogant self-centeredness. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Henry C.K. Liu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; marxism [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Saturday, May 15, 1999 9:38 AM Subject: [PEN-L:6856] With Malice Toward None - American Style Apologize to China? By William Buckley Published May 12, 1999 The big mistake was to apologize. It's OK to regret killing three Chinese in the embassy in Belgrade, but what is one apologizing for? It is as nonsensical as the words one hears on an airline. "We apologize for the late arrival." That gives off the sound of the pilot having come in late, or getting lost. You do not "apologize" if fog or dispatch instructions made you late, and you do not apologize if a bomber unintentionally bombed a foreign embassy. But then there was obviously something more afoot than the death of three Chinese. The Chinese government, it quickly transpired, was if not directly behind the anti-U.S. riot, (a) tolerant of it, and (b) pleased by it. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people whose parents lived through the Cultural Revolution and may have been among those many thousands who told marauding Red Guards that the neighbor over there had been seen listening to a foreign broadcast, leading to public execution. The idea that the wretched Chinese, 35 million of whose progenitors paid for China's love affair with Maoism, are shocked by the accidental death of three journalists causes one to wonder. During the 1930s, Henry Wallace, as secretary of agriculture, ordered the slaughtering of pigs, in an effort to maintain the price of pork. There was a great uproar. Wallace countered with the only witticism ever attributed to him. "You'd think," he said about his critics, "they were all related." We couldn't, one supposes, really expect the president of the United States or even the secretary of state to say it, but someone "close to the White House" might usefully have been quoted: "Under strict understanding of anonymity, the source said that the unofficial government line is: What is Peking complaining about? If the Chinese are against random killing, they should be exercised about what Milosevic is doing. A second White House source said it would be helpful to the cause of human freedom if Peking organized a volunteer force to go to Kosovo to fight the aggressor. 'They could call it the Belgrade Memorial Expeditionary Force,' he said." We learn that the Chinese government is in fact continuing what the Cultural Revolution types did routinely. It was to picture the United States as an imperialist power insensitive to the rights of other people and prisoner to the capitalist/imperialist imperative to commit aggression. The Wall Street Journal reports that the identical thing is going on in Russia, with readers and viewers enjoined by state media to believe that NATO, led by the United States, is engaged in crude imperialism. Counter facts, of course, have not the faintest possibility of prevailing against the official line. Here is a true challenge to U.S. diplomacy. We have been courting the Chinese throughout the tenure of Mr. Clinton. If it were youth acting on their own impulses, we could ignore the event -- youth were born to be ignored, when they
[PEN-L:6877] Re: Re: Re: RE: Old foggies/fogeys
From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... Butler thinks of herself as a radical and a leftist, and Lucas doesn't. Butler writes (not your kind of) critiques of orthodoxy, Lucas writes apologies for it. I think I mentioned a little while back that in '97 Lucas did a study of South African labor markets for the World Bank and it was so predictably neo-classical--unemployment is high because SA workers' wages are so high and sticky--and so quickly became politicized as a result, that WB people in the Pretoria office were appalled at the controversy and immediately disowned the report... On the more general point, though... Things are rough all over. Was reading these messages about radical economists who lose their sense of praxis and it reminded me of the editorial from the third issue of our SA journal "debate" a couple of years ago, in a special issue entitled "Intellectuals in Retreat": Here we refer to an extraordinary social phenomenon, based on what seems to be ceaseless individual meanderings--nearly all by white males in their 40s and 50s--from mid-1980s grassroots to early 1990s "class roots" politics: the lead Marxist critic of the Anglo American Corporation turned to advertizing his consulting services (as a trade union insider) to Anglo and other firms; the two leading Marxist critics of the Urban Foundation (Anglo American's social policy think-tank) became two of its key strategists; numerous academic Marxists did top-secret consulting work for the Urban Foundation, such as regarding land invasions (contemporary and historical) at precisely the time the UF's land speculation strategy was most threatened by the invasion tactic; the two leading Marxist critics of orthodox pension fund management became important exponents and practitioners of orthodox financial packaging through the big institutional investment firms; an energetic Marxist-workerist educator led a high- profile post-apartheid labor commission that rejected a national minimum wage; the lead Marxist critic of export- led growth strategy debuted in the Financial Mail by endorsing Taiwan as a model for post-apartheid SA and subsequently co-authored GEAR [SA's homegrown structural adjustment program]; the most influential Marxist economist within the trade unions turned from advocating social democracy in the pages of the SACP's African Communist to fiscal discipline and free trade within the Finance and Trade/Industry Ministries; and last and possibly least, South Africa's lead Marxist peasant scholar, who was jailed for his SACP ties during the 1960s and later (at the Sussex Institute for Development Studies during the 1970s) supervised the doctoral theses of leading South African neo-Poulantzians, eventually became the strategist of "homegrown" African structural adjustment at the World Bank (and presently serves as the Bank's London representative). In the process, it has been easy to denigrate the scholarship and pronouncements of erstwhile Leftists, such as the Independent Group newspaper columnist who once led the country's premier Kapital reading circle but today probably triples his Wits professorial salary by showing Moneybags how to mislead workers into a flexible future. This issue of debate is unabashedly full of criticism of patent sell-outs. But we continue a search for explanation-- aside from those vulgar Marxists amongst us content to point out the rise of the real interest rate on mortgage bonds from 1986 (-6 percent) to the 1990s (+10 percent) at precisely the time many of our elder brothers turned 35 and bought their first house and fast car. Aficionados of campus fads also know that during the 1980s and 1990s, intellectual life deteriorated. Political theory turned away into Laclauian cul-de-sacs, cultural analysis became grounded--if that's possible--in barren post-structuralist soil, and Marxian political economy stagnated as regulation theory distracted attention from classical theory while generating reformist "post-fordist" fantasies. Are we as intellectuals ready to come home? The answer probably relies most on something else that during the last decade changed perceptibly in South Africa's practical political life: the gradual ebbing of the strategic clarity of progressive forces as all manner of deal-making exercises ensued. The demand upon intellectuals for accountability to the Movement was taken less seriously, as every passing day revealed another profound compromise of principles and "engagement" with the forces of reaction. Under the circumstances, the desire for that elusive ego- boosting quality, relevance, which always motivates
[PEN-L:6872] Re: Re: RE: Old foggies/fogeys
Just thought I'd clarify: I meant the issue has been dressed up as two 'opposites' neither of which we need necessarily embrace - but if we don't embrace 'em, our discourse isn't in the frame - the frame constituted for economic debate today is one of Hayekian freedom plus price as optimal communication versus some quasi-Stalinist bureaucratic system by which political and economic power is reputedly even more concentrated and allocation decisions are reputedly necessarily sub-optimal. There's gotta be room opened up beyond this pair, no? Is there any new literature on this question? Cheers, Rob. -- G'day all, Seems to me that the coherent critique we lefties have available to us has four other political problems, too: 1) it has easily been dressed up as the optimal but problematic 'hidden hand' versus the demonstrably spotty history of the social democratic state as corruptible and bureaucratic 'dead hand'; (2) it is difficult to sustain it empirically [although if it were right, I reckon the world would look a lot like it actually does]; (3) it suggests a revolutionary politics insofar as the differential ownership and control of the means of production must be stopped [which involves expropriation, which might involve coercion - but maybe another decade or two of mega-mergers and super-privatisation might see the whole lot of us in a very different relationship to the MoP], and [4] one critique doesn't necessarily lead to one programme [market socialists like Nove and Schweikert would disagree with councilists like Albert and Hahnel, who would disagree with Leninists - who are always bagging each other, like the Trots and the Stalinists]. As we know, these disagreements are often extremely intense and often definitively impossible to resolve. The defenders of the status quo need defend but one order, but progressives have the difficult job of proffering competing scenarios. Solidarity, the left's only realistic modus operandi, is actually a lot easier for the individualistic right - and an economic position that does not offer currently dominant notions of freedom and the individual, neat numbers, untraumatic programmes and a solid linear prescription, is pushing shit uphill. And then we have the problem of rhetorical association, eh? Everyone's convinced the leftie critique is the thin edge of the gulag archipelago wedge. We are nipped in the bud, because people are convinced the flower will be bureaucratic centralism, I think. And maybe we do need to do a little work on some of our common premises. Doug O. suggested the other day, for instance, that we could best keep the law of value by allowing for Schumpetarian moments of innovation and associated fleeting moments of non-labour-endowed value. Would such an approach, for instance, defeat widely accepted wholesale rebuttals of the law of value (eg. Stigler and Boulding)? Yours musing incoherently, Rob. -- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:6859] RE: Old "foggies"/"fogeys" Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 07:06:33 -0700 The winnowing of the left from economics is hardly surprising if one steps back for a moment from who or what economics claims to be and do and considers instead how economics is historically situated as a discipline within the university and within society -- that is to say, if one takes a historical materialist view of economics. Economics is a sub-genre of history. It has appropriated to itself the authoritative posture of the natural sciences, from which position its objects of study -- the historical relationships in society -- necessarily are recast as nature-like. If one accepts a priori that private property, wage labour and market exchange are *essentially* natural, rather than historical, features of economic life, then one is reduced to higgling over their contingent weights and prices. The mathematics is seductive. It begins soothingly, "if we bracket out [for the sake of argument] history . . ." and it concludes sternly with a taboo against bringing history back in. But the real scandal occurs later with the supplementary concession that history may be appended to the [supposedly 'real'] analysis. Thus for economics, history is a contingent appendage while private property, wage labour and market exchange are essential. One need only read Lionel Robbins' Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science to see precisely how and why historical materialism is banished as *non-economics*. "Marxist economics", however, is permitted to play the game by the rules, the first of which -- the very definition of the object of "economic science" -- is to concede the universality of private property, wage labour and market exchange. Michael Perelman wrote: Peter is correct that radical economics is not reproducing itself. The space for new left economists is limited to a few liberal arts colleges, Catholic institutions, and less prestigious
