imperialism or globalism?

[Chris Burford]

At 01:56 09/05/00 -0400,  extracts from a remarkable article in the
Christian Science Monitor.



The following is excerpted from
an article in the Christian Science Monitor. In an era where Marx and
Lenin were declared irrelevant a few years ago, it is interesting to see
how even mainstream commentators are grappling with the debates and
concepts today.
Readers are encouraged to go to the original site of the CSM
for more information. We can find lots of useful information in the
mainstream press if we read with a critical
eye
I agree with this unsectarian and enquiring approach. But such articles
need careful reading.


Published in the Christian
Science Monitor:  "Lenin and Globalization" 
Lenin and globalization or Yes Virginia, there is such a thing as
imperialist 
rivalry and war

Benjamin Schwarz

For better or worse, today's
international market didn't simply
emerge. It was deliberately constructed. 
A false dichotomy, and fundamentally incorrect to say that the
international economy was deliberately constructed. Neither Lenin or
Kautsky would have made such an unmarxist statement. 

The marxist point is that conscious actions occur in the context of the
development of a process that is beyond the conscious control of any one
person. 

US foreign policy has been based
in essence on a hybrid of Lenin's and
Kautsky's analyses. 
This is bizarre.

Lenin was wrong to say that war between imperialist powers was inevitable
but he was not in a position to anticipate other ways in which they can
mediate their conflicts. 

It is however a fundamental distortion of Lenin's position to imply that
it is merely "Hobbesian"

Capitalism - at least the
advanced state of capitalism
represented by the global economy - may collapse as the political
order
that nurtured it crumbles.

This article is clever journalism, by a marxistish commentator, who
learned marxism at college and knows how to turn a clever idea around.


What it cannot do is analyse the underlying contradictions, of which
theories or policies are a mere reflection. 

There is both collusion and conflict between imperialist powers. That is
the contradiction that must be addressed. The left generally forgets the
existence of the conflicts, or knows no way to intervene in them without
becoming hopelessly opportunist.

In economic terms we see a laissez faire climate of relatively
unregulated global capitalist trade,  accentuating the uneven
accumulation of capital, in a way that greatly favours the US. 

The fragility to the system comes not from other states trying to regroup
to preserve their interests. It is they, being more in the periphery,
that will bear the burden of the periodic recessions or crashes. 

It is true that the US needs to be a little more prudent and play clever
games, for example over the appointment of the head of the IMF, in order
to appear to listen to third world opinion more than the Europeans do.


The issue that marxists should pose directly is that of democratic global
governance of the world economic system. Only with that perspective is it
possible to judge each of the moves of the imperialist powers as to
whether they are primarily progressive, or more probably reactionary.
Only from this perspective is it possible to analyse the serious
contradictions between imperialist powers which Lenin pointed to.

Chris Burford

London

Forwarded from Anthony Boynton

[Louis Proyect]

Louis,

Not too long ago there was a discussion on your list (Marxism) about why
the Soviet Union fell apart. 

I would like to suggest that the real reason was the Lada.

I guess that all of you who have been to Cuba or Finland, the former Soviet
Union, or for that matter Canada, have seen a Lada. And the Canadians,
Australians, and Europeans amongst you may even own one. 

How about it Nestor, any Ladas in Buenos Aires?

The Lada is "the" car of Russia. Like Ford once upon a time in the USA,  VW
in Germany, Renault in France, Fiat in Italy ... only more so: more than
70% of the cars produced in Russia now are Ladas. 

Lada was born in 1970, when the USSR made a deal with Italian imperialism -
justly famous at the time as the low tech leader among the imperialist
countries - to build a giant car factory producing 1960’s design Fiat 124’s. 

The Fiat 124 was a lovable piece of shit. I owned one, and spent many
enjoyable hours drinking beer and fixing it. It was underpowered, ugly, and
prone to break down, but - fortunately - it was easy to fix. 

I ran into Ladas when I first came to Colombia. At first I thought the new
Ladas were old Fiats. 

In the 30 years or so that Ladas have evolved since the first ersatz Fiat
124s there have been many changes. A new generation of Soviet born
automotive engineers have redesigned the cars, retooled the factories, and
produced a new generation of Ladas. (Although up until 1996, and maybe
beyond, updated 124 clones were still rolling off the production lines.)

The Lada Niva, a little four wheel drive vehicle, and the Samara - a small
family sedan or station wagon, are the two principal models available
today. And both are in the tradition of low tech, underpowered,
prone-to-break-down cars. No electronic distributors in these babies, and
California emission standards? Whoo-wee, they couldn’t get passed the
border guards of that state even with a good coyote.

The poor quality of Autovaz products (the name of the company that produces
Ladas) is a standing joke in the automotive world outside of the USA.
(Where the Yugo stands in for the Lada, see NYT poll on worst cars of the
Millennium - Yugo came in first, even beating out the Pinto.)

But this poor quality is not for want of trying hard. The USSR, and now
Russia, has spent a lot of effort, talent, and hard-to-come-by foreign
exchange in the effort to become a competitor in the global car market.
Exports mean hard currency. Ladas are usually the cheapest cars you can
find in the markets where they are sold.   

Ladas did make a dent in the world market, before the Korean invasion. The
Koreans pushed them out - with equally cheap, but much better quality,
exports of their own.

Now what do Ladas have to tell us about the fall of the Soviet Union?

That Soviet engineering in consumer durable goods was shoddy, behind the
times, unable to compete.

That soviet engineering was low-tech, unable to fully enter the "new
economy" -especially the miniaturization of electronics and the
introduction of electronics into other areas of technology like automobiles
... and weaponry.

And, what does this tell us about other aspects of Soviet technology, like
weaponry?

Soviet weaponry in the Middle East was wiped off the map by US-Israeli
weaponry - for the same basic reasons Lada’s can’t compete with Hyundais.
(Of course there were other reasons for the defeats suffered in the Middle
East against Israeli/US power - but weaponry was one of them.)

The qualitative aspects of Ladas - and Soviet technology in general - not
only have their global economic and military consequences, they have their
social consequences.

Here in Colombia, owning a car is a big deal. It is a social watershed.
Workers almost never own cars, factory parking lots are small because they
don’t need to be big. The petty bourgeoisie - and those above - own cars.
In Bogota - a city of roughly seven million people, there are about 800,000
private cars.

Here, as in California and probably the rest of the world as well, there is
a complicated social hierarchy of car ownership  [those of you who think
talking about car ownership is irrelevant to understanding capitalist
society probably tuned out earlier, but if not I am sure that secretly you
understand what I am talking about]. At the top the bourgeoisie drives
Mercedes, BMWs, and once in a while a Buick. The social climbing yuppies
drive Honda Accords, Nissan Sentras, and an occasional Volvo. The
conservative upper petty bourgeoisie drives Peugeots, and Mazda 626’s. The
petty bourgeois masses drive other Mazdas, Renaults, and Chevrolets. The
new entrants drive older models of these cars, plus various Korean cars and
Skodas. More or less.

At the bottom of the car hierarchy are old Renault 4’s, Simcas, and Ladas.

This country has a lot of cultural and human interchange with Cuba. There,
as you may or may not know, people commonly refer to the local bureaucracy
as the ‘Ladacracia." Because owning a Lada is a big dea

Re: [weisbrot-columns] (fwd)

[md7148]

Okey, I don't have time but I will respond!

Ricardo wrote:

>Mine,

>Am only trying to argue that one cannot take on such a huge moral
>burden as "liberation of third world from western oppression", or
>from capitalism, without examining one's social position within the
>West.

Who argued for the liberation of the third world ONLY? The Marxist
position is that one can not be liberated without the entire world being
liberated. This is a true "internationalist" position, not a rhetorical
third worldism. In so far as one part of the world benefits at the
expense of others and a large OBSERVABLE gap exists, it is incorrect to
imply that there is no problem with what is going.I am trying to identify
the problem in the first place. The problem is that the world system is
charecterized by multiple hierarchies with each staying at the top of
hierarchy by extracting resources from the others. US, as the global
hegemon, teaches Asians how to become capitalists so that Asian ruling
classes can exploit their own working classes and labor in the region.
We are not living in the WEST, as you claim we are. We are living in a
world system charecterized by systemic inequalities. Your reluctance to
see these inequalities prevents you from even taking aN hypothetical
attitude to your own ruling classes.

Remeber Marx's discussion of primitive accumulation. In that specific
historical chapter of CAPITAL, Marx argues that the development of
capitalism was possible by a forceful of "expropriation" of population
from the land and formation of "free" workers thrown into cities as
"rightless" proleterians. Coercion, not free will, was internal to
capitalism to establish itself. What Marx identified hundred
years ago has been taking place at the world system level as each country
becomes capitalist. They go through the same sucking realities of British
capitalism. Marx talked about how the factory conditions were resembling
"slave labor" in Britian (including child labor).Marx also talked about
how the development of British capitalism was contingent upon imperialism,
colonialism and slave labor initially. Whether you beleive it or not,
these things still continue. Are you gonna deny these REALITIES?. Are you
gonna deny that the hourly wage labor in Dominican Republic is $1.64? Are
you gonna deny that Nike capitalists are beating Vietnamese women? Are you
gonna deny that Taliban fundamentalists stone women to death with the
tanks barrowed from the West? Are you gonna deny that the US sells guns to
Turkey (and its ruling classes)for killing Kurdish people, as well as its
own Turkish progressives?

>There's a real moral dilemma when a person living in it up in
>the West demands that the TW refrain from western
>There's a real moral dilemma when a person living in it up in
>the West demands that the TW refrain from western
>consumerism/technologies,  or when a TW immigrant who is really
>westernized though still pretends to be from the TW,
>receives a  hundred thousand or  more salary, collects
>large research grants, has a lot of time off from teaching, as well
>as many opportunities for travel and lecturing around the world - like
>going
>to Vienna, the old capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire,
>criticizing the West,

1. This is indeed WRONG and politically problematic. Earning a western
salary should not prevent you from criticizing capitalism. According to
your logic, then, Marx should have never got his law degree at University
of Berlin, or, Engels should have never worked as a clerk in export
business and written articles for press. So what is the point with
this political correctness for my sake? All of us are trapped in this big
dilemma of trying to criticize capitalism and securing a position in the
intellectual market place (unfortunately). You always bring this issue of
foreigners' salary and third worldism card. Why? Many american (and
western) leftist intellectuals also criticize the west and american
militarism. I am really pissed when somebody "orientalizes" my identity
(where are you Said?) to imply that I don't have the right to criticize
what is unjust since I am so and so. Why is this "salary" issue a moral
dilemma for us ONLY, WHILE IT IS ALSO A MORAL DILEMMA FOR YOU? Why do you
persistenly create artifical distinctions for foreigners? From what I see,
you are making vulgar culturalism here.

2. btw, I don't even own a salary.I am a foreign phd student trying to
survive here.
 

>or pretending to speak for the "peasant class"
>or believing that their "radical" writing  is a form of political
>engagement with "popular struggle".

Who is saying this? Give example..

>Be honest with yourself (and I
>don't me you personally, Mine, nor anyone here: you are carrying an
>argument with other cultural elites. Nothing wrong with that.

I am NOT a cultural elite. Evidently, you are, not me. I rejected the
the dominant culture (US) and my own culture many moons ago.

I am a true cosmopolitan, which is more than what you 

Vietnamese countryside

[Louis Proyect]

"A collapse of the Soviet regime would lead inevitably to the collapse of
the planned economy, and thus to the abolition of state property. The bond
of compulsion between the trusts and the factories within them would fall
away. The more successful enterprises would succeed in coming out on the
road of independence. They might convert or they might find some themselves
into stock companies, other transitional form of property— one, for
example, in which the workers should participate in the profits. The
collective farms would disintegrate at the same time, and far more easily.
The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship, if it were not replaced
by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations
with a CATASTROPHIC DECLINE of industry and culture. "

Leon Trotsky, "Revolution Betrayed"

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: Re: Vietnamese countryside

[Louis Proyect]

Jim Devine:
>I don't think the issue of democracy should be separated from the class 
>nature of the state. At least as I understand Marx, he believed that the 
>proletariat would be a different kind of ruling class than previous ruling 
>classes, that its rule would have to be democratic. 

Yes, that's what Marx believed, but he didn't anticipate Stalinism.
Stalinism was undemocratic, but it defended socialized property relations
up until 1990. The question of why it shifted to supporting capitalism is
the topic of Kotz-Weir's book which I have to get to at some point. Last
night there was a dreadful PBS documentary on Putin, which totally omitted
the role of the United States in causing one of the most catastrophic
economic collapses in modern history.



Louis Proyect

(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)

the Vietnamese countryside

[Louis Proyect]

Jim Devine:
>the kind of socialism built depends on which groups have the power in the 
>process of building it. Which groups had the power? the CP?

Yes, the Communist Party had the power.

>I just don't see that revolution as "proletarian" unless the organized 
>proletariat has a lot of power in creating that revolution.

But there was not much of a proletariat in Vietnam. Since the peasantry--in
Marxist terms--is not a class per se, it is best to see revolutions like
the Chinese or Vietnamese not in terms of the immediate social base at the
time of seizure of power, but in terms of the trajectory. The Vietnamese
Communist Party intended to modernize and urbanize the country through a
planned economy and integration with the Warsaw Pact bloc. History
disappointed it.

>I simply see that revolution as a nationalist revolution pushing for 
>economic development (because of the failure of capitalism to develop such 
>countries and the constant wars by France, the US, and China against 
>Vietnam), rather than being a classical Marxian proletarian revolution. 

The only 'classical' Marxian proletarian revolution can take place in an
industrialized country, but as we know the contradictions of such countries
are not as extreme as they are in places like China or Vietnam.

>The party-state seems more interested in preserving its own 
>power. (Of course, not being an expert on Vietnam, I look forward to 
>getting more information on this question.)

All this is discussed in Gabriel Kolko's excellent "Vietnam: Anatomy of a
Peace".

>"all" revolutions in the 1917 vein? does that include the Khmer Rouge 
>revolution? that revolution also involved Marxian rhetoric (though it was 
>profoundly anti-Marxian in practice, as I believe you agree).

I exclude Cambodia. 

>I don't know anyone who professes the theory that history moves forward in 
>a "unilinear fashion." 

The Analytical Marxists.



Louis Proyect

(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)

contradictions of capitalism

[Charles Brown]

Hear, hear !

CB

>>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 05/10/00 12:07PM >>>

>But when you support quotas against imports of textiles from Africa, that 
>is exactly the choice that you are making...

but if the "free market" (and its supporters) insists that the costs of 
increased import competition be borne by the least-skilled (and least-paid) 
of manufacturing workers, what choice do they have but to defend their 
families by supporting protectionism (often allying with their distasteful 
employers)?

I don't think their support for protectionism makes any  sense _in the 
abstract_ and _in the long run_ (when we're all dead, right?),  but looking 
at the concrete situation from the perspective of those who suffer the 
costs of the neo-liberal program, it does make sense. People defend their 
living standards when they're under attack, right? (Similarly, I can 
imagine that almost all tenured professors would defend the institution of 
tenure against "free trade.")

Neo-liberalism (like its forebear, the free-trading British liberalism of 
the 19th century) makes grand promises that "free trade" will raise global 
efficiency, with the tacit implication that the benefits of that rise in 
efficiency will accrue to all, including those whose lives are most 
disrupted by "freer trade." This implication conflicts with economic 
theory, which says that individual groups of people may easily _lose_ 
despite global increases in efficiency. (It's only with 
always-to-remain-hypothetical compensation that such movs pass the Pareto 
test.) The powerful -- not only capitalists like the dreaded Roger Milliken 
but also the technobureaucrats like Lawrence Summers -- work hard to ensure 
that all of the benefits of rising efficiency accrue to themselves. (It's 
called "rent seeking" in the lit.) The textile workers thrown out of jobs 
thus get denied any of the benefits, getting little or no compensation for 
the costs of the disruption to their lives by the "freer trade." The rise 
of unemployment that results from trade-related changes weakens their 
bargaining power even further (at least temporarily).

The powerful also strive to make sure that the African and other workers 
who get the textile jobs get few benefits, perhaps not enough to compensate 
for the loss of non-market sources of sustenance and the disruption of 
their lives by the commercialization of agriculture. These textile workers 
-- also lacking the clout allowing them to capture the efficiency gains -- 
find themselves in a world-wide process of competition in which those firms 
with the lowest wage/labor productivity ratio win, encouraging the "race to 
the bottom." (The global fall in wage/labor productivity ratios -- which 
works hand-in-glove with the process of competitive austerity and 
export-promotion encouraged by the IMF/World Bank -- encourages world 
underconsumption tendencies, which threaten to undermine the demand-side 
ability to _realize_ the efficiency gains.)

All of this assumes that freer trade raises global efficiency. It likely 
also means a global lowering of environmental standards, which means an 
increase in external costs. This encouragement of the raping of nature (and 
cost-dumping on other human beings) may easily swamp the more 
straightforward gains from trade. That, plus the largely-successful efforts 
by the powerful to grab the benefits of trade for themselves, leaves little 
for the workers.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine 

imperialism or globalism? (fwd)

[md7148]

Chris, the article is extracted from the _Christian Science Monitor_.
it is written from a mainstream perspective, not from a "marxistish" point
of view. thus, it is not suprising that the author distorts Lenin.. that
was the point..

Mine


-- Forwarded message --
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 08:14:21 +0100
From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:18728] imperialism or globalism?

At 01:56 09/05/00 -0400,  extracts from a remarkable article in the 
Christian Science Monitor.



>The following is excerpted from an article in the Christian Science 
>Monitor. In an era where Marx and Lenin were declared irrelevant a few 
>years ago, it is interesting to see how even mainstream commentators are 
>grappling with the debates and concepts today.
>Readers are encouraged to go to the original site of the CSM for more 
>information. We can find lots of useful information in the mainstream 
>press if we read with a critical eye

I agree with this unsectarian and enquiring approach. But such articles 
need careful reading.


>Published in the Christian Science Monitor:  "Lenin and Globalization"
>Lenin and globalization or Yes Virginia, there is such a thing as imperialist
>rivalry and war
>
>Benjamin Schwarz


>For better or worse, today's international market didn't simply
>emerge. It was deliberately constructed.

A false dichotomy, and fundamentally incorrect to say that the 
international economy was deliberately constructed. Neither Lenin or 
Kautsky would have made such an unmarxist statement.

The marxist point is that conscious actions occur in the context of the 
development of a process that is beyond the conscious control of any one 
person.

>US foreign policy has been based in essence on a hybrid of Lenin's and
>Kautsky's analyses.

This is bizarre.

Lenin was wrong to say that war between imperialist powers was inevitable 
but he was not in a position to anticipate other ways in which they can 
mediate their conflicts.

It is however a fundamental distortion of Lenin's position to imply that it 
is merely "Hobbesian"

>Capitalism - at least the advanced state of capitalism
>represented by the global economy - may collapse as the political order
>that nurtured it crumbles.


This article is clever journalism, by a marxistish commentator, who learned 
marxism at college and knows how to turn a clever idea around.

What it cannot do is analyse the underlying contradictions, of which 
theories or policies are a mere reflection.

There is both collusion and conflict between imperialist powers. That is 
the contradiction that must be addressed. The left generally forgets the 
existence of the conflicts, or knows no way to intervene in them without 
becoming hopelessly opportunist.

In economic terms we see a laissez faire climate of relatively unregulated 
global capitalist trade,  accentuating the uneven accumulation of capital, 
in a way that greatly favours the US.

The fragility to the system comes not from other states trying to regroup 
to preserve their interests. It is they, being more in the periphery, that 
will bear the burden of the periodic recessions or crashes.

It is true that the US needs to be a little more prudent and play clever 
games, for example over the appointment of the head of the IMF, in order to 
appear to listen to third world opinion more than the Europeans do.

The issue that marxists should pose directly is that of democratic global 
governance of the world economic system. Only with that perspective is it 
possible to judge each of the moves of the imperialist powers as to whether 
they are primarily progressive, or more probably reactionary. Only from 
this perspective is it possible to analyse the serious contradictions 
between imperialist powers which Lenin pointed to.

Chris Burford

London

re: the Vietnamese countryside

[Jim Devine]

Louis Proyect writes: >I want to amplify on some of Sam Pawlett's comments. 
Vietnam, to remind youngsters on the list, had a proletarian revolution in 
the 1970s that like China was largely led by peasants. <

I'm not a youngster (nor do I play one on TV), but in what sense was that 
revolution "proletarian"? were wage-workers (proletarians) organized in a 
workers' political party and democratically-run unions in state power? I 
doubt it.

Maybe the ideology of the CP of Vietnam could be called "proletarian," 
since if I remember correctly that party adheres to "Marxism," originally a 
pro-proletarian vision. But not only has the term "Marxism" been abused a 
lot (e.g., by Stalin) but doesn't it go against historical materialism to 
define a revolution by the official ideological tag that its leaders use? 
As Marx and Engels write in THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY, it's a mistake to judge 
anyone by their own self-perception.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: British intervention in Sierra Leone

[Jim Devine]

At 07:47 AM 5/10/00 +0100, you wrote:
>In the case of East Timor, progressives in the west, such as Chomsky, 
>called for Western intervention.

I don't think this is quite accurate, since Chomsky doesn't trust the 
"West" to do the right kind of intervention. After all, the "West" (the US) 
was a major force behind the creation of the disaster in East Timor, along 
with their Indonesian allies.

>IMO this particular British involvement is progressive and is part of the 
>developing process of world governance, so long as it assists the UN and 
>the West African peace keeping force to re-organise. ...

I'm all in favor of "world governance," but who controls the process of 
that governance?

>I suggest that only left wingers who are in fact anarchists or pacifists 
>would *in this particular context* denounce British intervention in Sierra 
>Leone as imperialist in nature.

I guess I'd say that having some kind of state (even if organized by 
British imperialists) is better than a Hobbesian war of each against all 
(anarchy). But as many critics of Hobbes (including John Locke, a patron 
saint of neo-Liberalism) have noted, power corrupts and absolute power 
corrupts absolutely. (To see proof of this proposition, look at Rupert 
Murdoch.) The British will impose a kind of order that serves _their 
interests_ (and that of their allies).

I don't know much about Sierra Leone (even my ENCARTA CD-ROM is a box for 
moving to a new office), but to what extent is the current anarchy a 
_result_ of British actions in the past? After all, they were the ruling 
colonial power there and likely applied their standard divide-and-rule 
policies. They probably left the country in the hands of British-trained 
bureaucrats who had little empathy with or from the people, encouraging a 
division between the state and society. Add in the fact that the 
geographical boundaries in Africa seldom correspond to ethnic ones...

What we need to look for is sources of order on the ground _in Sierra 
Leone_. What are the forces there that can counteract the power of the 
external forces so that a very minimum Sierra Leonean voices are heard in 
creation of order? Are there any political movements that can replace the 
"rag-tag guerilla army" in power? And what is the nature of that army? We 
need more of a concrete analysis of concrete conditions

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Re: Re: contradictions of capitalism

[Jim Devine]

>But when you support quotas against imports of textiles from Africa, that 
>is exactly the choice that you are making...

but if the "free market" (and its supporters) insists that the costs of 
increased import competition be borne by the least-skilled (and least-paid) 
of manufacturing workers, what choice do they have but to defend their 
families by supporting protectionism (often allying with their distasteful 
employers)?

I don't think their support for protectionism makes any  sense _in the 
abstract_ and _in the long run_ (when we're all dead, right?),  but looking 
at the concrete situation from the perspective of those who suffer the 
costs of the neo-liberal program, it does make sense. People defend their 
living standards when they're under attack, right? (Similarly, I can 
imagine that almost all tenured professors would defend the institution of 
tenure against "free trade.")

Neo-liberalism (like its forebear, the free-trading British liberalism of 
the 19th century) makes grand promises that "free trade" will raise global 
efficiency, with the tacit implication that the benefits of that rise in 
efficiency will accrue to all, including those whose lives are most 
disrupted by "freer trade." This implication conflicts with economic 
theory, which says that individual groups of people may easily _lose_ 
despite global increases in efficiency. (It's only with 
always-to-remain-hypothetical compensation that such movs pass the Pareto 
test.) The powerful -- not only capitalists like the dreaded Roger Milliken 
but also the technobureaucrats like Lawrence Summers -- work hard to ensure 
that all of the benefits of rising efficiency accrue to themselves. (It's 
called "rent seeking" in the lit.) The textile workers thrown out of jobs 
thus get denied any of the benefits, getting little or no compensation for 
the costs of the disruption to their lives by the "freer trade." The rise 
of unemployment that results from trade-related changes weakens their 
bargaining power even further (at least temporarily).

The powerful also strive to make sure that the African and other workers 
who get the textile jobs get few benefits, perhaps not enough to compensate 
for the loss of non-market sources of sustenance and the disruption of 
their lives by the commercialization of agriculture. These textile workers 
-- also lacking the clout allowing them to capture the efficiency gains -- 
find themselves in a world-wide process of competition in which those firms 
with the lowest wage/labor productivity ratio win, encouraging the "race to 
the bottom." (The global fall in wage/labor productivity ratios -- which 
works hand-in-glove with the process of competitive austerity and 
export-promotion encouraged by the IMF/World Bank -- encourages world 
underconsumption tendencies, which threaten to undermine the demand-side 
ability to _realize_ the efficiency gains.)

All of this assumes that freer trade raises global efficiency. It likely 
also means a global lowering of environmental standards, which means an 
increase in external costs. This encouragement of the raping of nature (and 
cost-dumping on other human beings) may easily swamp the more 
straightforward gains from trade. That, plus the largely-successful efforts 
by the powerful to grab the benefits of trade for themselves, leaves little 
for the workers.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

I love profits but not you

[Alejandro Valle]

Filed at 11:58 a.m. EDT

  By The Associated Press

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker,
  said today it shipped nearly 1 million computer circuit boards
that could
  contain a defect that destroys important files. Shares fell 4
percent on the
  news.

  The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company sells a variety of parts
that go
  into a computer, including the motherboard, the primary
component on
  which the processors, main memory and support circuitry rest.

  Some motherboards shipped since November have a defective
  ``memory translator hub'' that experiences problems in moving
signals
  between a cheaper form of random access memory called SDRAM
and
  the 820 Intel processor, said spokesman Michael Sullivan.

  Electrical problems ``can cause some systems to intermittently
reset,
  reboot and/or hang,'' Intel said in a statement, and ``can
under extreme
  conditions, potentially cause data corruption.'' Intel said it
would replace
  the affected motherboards.

  The motherboards were shipped to a variety of computer
manufacturers,
  including major customers such as Dell Computer Corp. and
Compaq
  Computer Corp. The 820 chipset and potentially defective
memory
  translator components also were sold to companies who build
their own
  brand of motherboard components, making it difficult to assess
the extent
  or source of the problem, Sullivan said.

  ``We've been taking a look at this and trying to find out
exactly what the
  cause of it ... but the fact of the matter is we really can't
identify a root
  cause,'' he said today.

  The company urged consumers who bought computers since
November
  to contact their manufacturer if they've experienced problems
or to go to
  Intel's Web site to determine if the component that may need
replacing is
  present in their system.

  Individual motherboards cost slightly more than $100, and
Intel warned
  the problem could have ``a material effect'' on profits,
depending on the
  replacement rate.

  Intel shares tumbled $5, or 4.3 percent, to $111.93 3/4 in
late morning
  trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

  The news of the defect came on the same day that Intel
released design
  details of its upcoming Itanium processor on the Internet --
the first time
  the company has done so.

  Intel hopes to use the Itanium chip, due out later this year,
to break into
  the lucrative market for high-powered servers and workstations
serving
  increasingly popular corporate networks that look to navigate
Web sites
  with speed and perform other high-powered functions.

  By opening up the source code for its chip for the first time,
Intel hopes
  software developers will offer improvements to the processor
before its
  final release and create accompanying software to go with it.

  --

  On the Net:

  To determine if you have the affected motherboard:
  http://www.intel.com/support/mth

  Information on the Itanium chip:
  http://developer.intel.com/design/ia-64/architecture.htm


--

Dr. Alejandro Valle Baeza
Div. Posgrado, Fac. Economia
UNAM, Ciudad Universitaria
Mexico 04510, D.F.
(525)6222148, fax (525)6222158
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Re: Re: contradictions of capitalism

[Jim Devine]

At 01:20 PM 5/10/00 -0700, you wrote:
>I want to thank Jim Devine for his exception[al] post.  I might add one minor
>point: by freeing capital to move to the places with the lowest standards for
>the environment or for labor, it removes the incentives to improve technology
>by making it more labor saving or environmentally friendly.

you're welcome.

I'd like to add that the neo-liberals never seem to want to talk about 
capital mobility, which they treat as somehow being a kind of international 
trade. But some argue that institutions like NAFTA are really about capital 
mobility, not about trade. (Sh*t! I can't find my BUSINESS WEEK, where the 
book was reviewed. I think the book is _The Selling of Free Trade: Nafta, 
Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy_ by John R. 
MacArthur.) So rhetoric about "free trade" is used to sell capital mobility 
(i.e., increased power for capital).

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

LBO web update

[Doug Henwood]

Finally, after long delay, the LBO website has been updated.

* "Dow 36,000" - why the stock market should quadruple almost 
overnight, even though it's already way above trend 


* "Boom for whom?" - latest U.S. income & poverty numbers - most 
people doing better, but rich still doing best 


* U.S. employment , 
unemployment , and 
earnings  figures - 
unemployment way low, real earnings positive for almost 5 years!

With snazzy graphics and generous links sprinkled throughout.

-- 

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
Village Station - PO Box 953
New York NY 10014-0704 USA
+1-212-741-9852 voice  +1-212-807-9152 fax
email: 
web: 

Re: Re: Re: Vietnamese countryside (fwd)

[md7148]

 Jim Devine wrote:
> >I don't think the issue of democracy should be separated from the class
> >nature of the state. At least as I understand Marx, he believed that the
> >proletariat would be a different kind of ruling class than previous ruling
> >classes, that its rule would have to be democratic.

Louis Proyect responds:
>Yes, that's what Marx believed, but he didn't anticipate Stalinism.

Jim Devine responds:

>Hal Draper has a lot of quotes in his KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION 
>which he interprets as anticipating Stalinism. But I don't want to get
>into 
>quote-mongering.

Bad example! why should we take Hal Draper seriously then if he
misinterprets Marx? Marx could not have anticipated Stalinism, Stalin 
misread Marx in some ways. The argument that Marx anticipated Stalinism is 
completely a historical statement, made out of context, which pays
attention to "ideas" rather than to circumstances of Stalin's Russia.
Projecting Marx onto Stalin or vice versa is an idealist reading of
history. Ideas should be judged vis a vis circumstances, not circumstances
vis a vis ideas, especially in Marxian praxis (Reread Gramsci)!

>Also needed is proletarian power.

What a charming invitation! If you really trusted proleterian power,
you would try to understand, or at least appreciate, the circumstances
and social forces of Vietnamese revolution instead of saying that it
was not a revolution in Marxist sense. This way of thinking reminds me of
bourgeois Kautsky who did not expect a revolution in Russia because Russia
was economically "backward", or the circumstances were not yet ready.
("so let's postpone "mass democracy" folks! because the "masses" are still
"immature" kind of ELITIST way of thinking)

The people who do *not* want revolutions can not IMAGINE revolutions..


Mine Doyran
Phd Student
Political Science
SUNY/Albany

Re: Vietnamese countryside

[Jim Devine]

At 06:16 PM 05/10/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>"A collapse of the Soviet regime would lead inevitably to the collapse of
>the planned economy, and thus to the abolition of state property. The bond
>of compulsion between the trusts and the factories within them would fall
>away. The more successful enterprises would succeed in coming out on the
>road of independence. They might convert or they might find some themselves
>into stock companies, other transitional form of property— one, for
>example, in which the workers should participate in the profits. The
>collective farms would disintegrate at the same time, and far more easily.
>The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship, if it were not replaced
>by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations
>with a CATASTROPHIC DECLINE of industry and culture. "
>
>Leon Trotsky, "Revolution Betrayed"

Trotsky was very smart.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine

Workplace 3.1

[Christian A. Gregory]

distribute widely

an all-new format includes breaking news: * occupation at uiuc * strike
at uc * sit-in at osu * decision at the nlrb* vote at emu * election at
cuny * teach-in at gwu *

Issue 3.1 (May 2000) of  *workplace: a journal for academic labor* now
available at:
http://www.workplace-gsc.com/

contributions by: * jamie owen daniel * doug henwood * ken surin * rich
daniels * leo parascondola * chantal sundaram * doug ivison * ellie
kennedy * mikael swayze * sarah riegel * aparna sundar and kyoko sato *
and many others

Feature sections
"The WTO and After," edited by Christian Gregory
"Organizing Canada," edited by Daniel Kim  ("These young people are
being starved and bullied," wrote Margaret Atwood)

Interviews
"This raises the question of why labor has suddenly become a field in
which undergraduates and even high school students get energized and do
work. It feels like a new field to struggle in.." Barbara Bowen,
speaking with Ann Wallace

"I might call it the forgotten generation, to reflect the daunting fact
that a majority of people who did graduate work through the 90s have not
gotten or will not get permanent jobs." Jeffrey Williams, speaking with
Felicia Carr
_

Re: Re: Vietnamese countryside

[Jim Devine]

I wrote:
>I don't think the issue of democracy should be separated from the class
>nature of the state. At least as I understand Marx, he believed that the
>proletariat would be a different kind of ruling class than previous ruling
>classes, that its rule would have to be democratic.

Charles Brown replies:
>CB: I agree that Marx considered the rule of the proletariat as 
>democratic. For in _The Manifesto_ , Engels and Marx refer to the 
>democracy as the working class as the ruling class. But let us look a 
>little more closely at what democracy is in Marxism.. Lenin's _The State 
>and Revolution_ is the best precis of these issues.

I think that Hal Draper's KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION is the best on 
this (along with his little book on the "dictatorship of the proletariat), 
but of course it's not a precis.

BTW, a friend (an expert on Soviet agriculture and politics) who spent a 
year in the USSR in 1977 or so reported that Soviet academics were expected 
to quote from Lenin in all articles (including articles on soil chemistry). 
But they weren't supposed to quote from THE STATE AND REVOLUTION, seemingly 
because it was seen as anarchistic.

>As Lenin points out, Marx proudly claimed that he had discovered the 
>"dictatorship of the proletariat". He also assumed  that socialism would 
>still have a state, and that a state is an apparatus for oppression of one 
>class by another. So, "democracy" in socialism doesn't mean that the 
>bourgeosie who remain have the right to contest for state power, whether 
>through votes or any of the other mechanisms  set out in the American 
>model. In other words , the democracy of socialism may encompass 
>repression of some Bill of Rights type rights for some in order to retain 
>a proletarian dictatorship.

Right, but the issue between Louis and myself was not about this issue. 
Rather, it was about who was running the state: was it the proletariat or 
some small minority of CP members? so was it a dictatorship _by_ the 
proletariat or a dictatorship _in the name of_ the proletariat? or a 
dictatorship _over_ the proletariat? or the Stalinist dictatorship 
_exploiting_ the proletariat?

>Furthermore, Lenin points out that in the Marxist conception DEMOCRACY 
>itself is always a form of state, i.e. has an repressive apparatus. So, in 
>communism (after socialism) there is no democracy either. In other words, 
>democracy is not the highest form of organization or self-governance in 
>the Marxist conception.

In the highest form, the distinction between the state and society goes 
away (as the state "withers away"). I can't see how that can't involve 
democracy (unless we're talking about total and utter domination of society 
by the state).

>What I say here doesn't contradict Lou and Jim's criticisms and comments 
>about the failures of democracy and true proletarian class rule in the 
>first efforts to build socialism. But in measuring those first socialisms 
>against a Marxist standard of democracy, it is necessary to take into 
>account the above which distinguishes the Marxist conception of democracy 
>which is significantly different from some of the conceptions we might 
>hold through our location in American culture and history.

I wasn't measuring modern socialisms against some "Marxist standard of 
democracy." Instead, I was asking who had power.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Vietnamese countryside

[Charles Brown]

>>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 05/10/00 03:54PM >>>

I don't think the issue of democracy should be separated from the class 
nature of the state. At least as I understand Marx, he believed that the 
proletariat would be a different kind of ruling class than previous ruling 
classes, that its rule would have to be democratic.



CB: I agree that Marx considered the rule of the proletariat as democratic. For in 
_The Manifesto_ , Engels and Marx refer to the democracy as the working class as the 
ruling class. But let us look a little more closely at what democracy is in Marxism.. 
Lenin's _The State and Revolution_ is the best precis of these issues.

As Lenin points out, Marx proudly claimed that he had discovered the "dictatorship of 
the proletariat". He also assumed  that socialism would still have a state, and that a 
state is an apparatus for oppression of one class by another. So, "democracy" in 
socialism doesn't mean that the bourgeosie who remain have the right to contest for 
state power, whether through votes or any of the other mechanisms  set out in the 
American model. In other words , the democracy of socialism may encompass repression 
of some Bill of Rights type rights for some in order to retain a proletarian 
dictatorship.

Furthermore, Lenin points out that in the Marxist conception DEMOCRACY itself is 
always a form of state, i.e. has an repressive apparatus. So, in communism (after 
socialism) there is no democracy either. In other words, democracy is not the highest 
form of organization or self-governance in the Marxist conception.

What I say here doesn't contradict Lou and Jim's criticisms and comments about the 
failures of democracy and true proletarian class rule in the first efforts to build 
socialism. But in measuring those first socialisms against a Marxist standard of 
democracy, it is necessary to take into account the above which distinguishes the 
Marxist conception of democracy which is significantly different from some of the 
conceptions we might hold through our location in American culture and history. And so 
the first socialisms may come out a bit differently measured by the Marxist standard 
than it would seem without looking at the matter more closely as here.  (The Paris 
Commune was flawed from Marx's standpoint too. He supported it despite the fact he 
knew it was a "folly of despair", and certainly it was not superiorly democratic in 
the senses that the Soviet Union et al are criticized here ).

CB




))
 His model -- based in 
historical practice rather than in abstract slogans -- was the Paris 
Commune. Democracy was needed if progress toward abolishing both classes 
and the distinction between the state and society was not to be 
side-tracked into the creation of a new class of those wielding state 
power. The problem, as I see it, with the places in which "actually 
existing socialism" prevailed is that such a new class developed. (NB: 
that's not the same thing as saying that a capitalist class developed, 
though in Russia a lot of the old CPers used their state power to turn 
themselves into full-scale capitalists.)

BTW, on the issue of democracy, it's not just a intra-national 
phenomenon.  I think that the winning of national independence (by Vietnam 
and other countries dominated by imperialism) was a step forward in terms 
of democracy. (Sometimes, unfortunately, nationalist revolutions ran 
roughshod over ethnic minorities, as with the Nicaraguans vs. the Miskitus.)

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine 

Re: Re: Dubya Speeks

[Carrol Cox]

Jim Devine wrote:

> President Eisenhower, it is said, pretended to be inarticulate in order to
> have the "common touch" so necessary to success in US politics. He was, the
> same stories say, a closet intellectual.

I remember one anecdote. They were planning to issue a press release
on some policy that might get a hostile reception. Eisenhower told his
advisors something like "Don't worry -- I'll dumb it up and confuse
everyone." Murray Kempton remarked that no regular army bridge
player could avoid bankruptcy if he didn't have brains.

Carrol

Vietnamese countryside

[Louis Proyect]

Jim Devine:
>And we should trust a Communist Party with a monopoly of political power? 
>Louis, didn't you have some troubles a few years ago with the self-styled 
>Leninists of the SWP? doesn't that suggest some lessons about giving power 
>over to a minority?

I am not talking about democracy. I am talking about identifying the class
character of a state. The Hitlerite regime was undemocratic, but
capitalist. The Roosevelt regime fighting it was both democratic and
capitalist.

>That trajectory fits with my view that it wasn't a "proletarian revolution" 
>in Marx's sense of the term.

No, but it is in the sense of Monthly Review, Ernest Mandel type (ie.,
contemporary) Marxism.

>It's true that a home-grown revolution -- like Vietnam or Cuba -- was more 
>likely to get a better deal

Yes, it is better for a developing country to have broken with imperialism
and aligning itself with the USSR than not. At least prior to 1990.



Louis Proyect

(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Vietnamese countryside (fwd)

[md7148]

I did *not* misunderstand what you wrote. You just threw ideas without
explaining them. that is why, your post is open to misinterpretation. I
would like to see the quotes to know how Marx "anticipates"
Stalinism...as a person partially trained in economic history, it seems
to me a very "ahistorical" thing to project "ideas" abstractly onto
entirely different circumstances and social forces, and then judge
circumstances based on ideas, while the opposite should be the case. that
was the concern.

merci,

Mine

Jim Devine responds:

>Hal Draper has a lot of quotes in his KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION
>which he interprets as anticipating Stalinism. But I don't want to get
>into
>quote-mongering.


>Bad example! why should we take Hal Draper seriously then if he
>misinterprets Marx? Marx could not have anticipated Stalinism, Stalin


I continued:

>... The argument that Marx anticipated Stalinism is completely a 
>historical statement, made out of context, which pays attention to "ideas" 
>rather than to circumstances of Stalin's Russia. Projecting Marx onto 
>Stalin or vice versa is an idealist reading of
>history. Ideas should be judged vis a vis circumstances, not circumstances 
>vis a vis ideas, especially in Marxian praxis (Reread Gramsci)!

>I did NOT blame Marx for Stalin. You misread what I wrote. Rather, I was 
>saying that Marx had some understanding of the problem of Stalinism.

clip


> >>Also needed is proletarian power.
>
>>What a charming invitation! If you really trusted proleterian power, you 
>would try to understand, or at least appreciate, the circumstances and 
>social forces of Vietnamese revolution instead of saying that it was not a 
>revolution in Marxist sense.

>this simply repeats something that Louis and I have already discussed and
>I 
>have no intention to repeat that discussion. He and I attach different 
>meanings to the word "proletarian."


clip

>>This way of thinking reminds me of bourgeois Kautsky who did not expect
a 
>>revolution in Russia because Russia was economically "backward", or the 
>>circumstances were not yet ready. ("so let's postpone "mass democracy" 
>>folks! because the "masses" are still "immature" kind of ELITIST way of 
>>thinking)

>ditto: Louis and I had a discussion about this. You misunderstand what I 
>wrote. I'm in favor of "mass democracy" (except if that's simply a slogan 
>which has some other meaning).

clip


>Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine


Mine Doyran
Political Science
Phd student
SUNY/Albany

Re: Dubya Speeks

[Jim Devine]

At 01:16 PM 5/10/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Reported in the Washington Post, May 5, 2000, Page C1.
>Title:  "What's On W's Mind?  Hard To Say," by Dana
>Milbank.

President Eisenhower, it is said, pretended to be inarticulate in order to 
have the "common touch" so necessary to success in US politics. He was, the 
same stories say, a closet intellectual.

Frankly, I doubt that W is following that tradition.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: the Vietnamese countryside

[Jim Devine]

I wrote:
> >the kind of socialism built depends on which groups have the power in 
> the process of building it. Which groups had the power? the CP?<

Louis Proyect writes:
>Yes, the Communist Party had the power.

And we should trust a Communist Party with a monopoly of political power? 
Louis, didn't you have some troubles a few years ago with the self-styled 
Leninists of the SWP? doesn't that suggest some lessons about giving power 
over to a minority?

> >I just don't see that revolution as "proletarian" unless the organized 
> proletariat has a lot of power in creating that revolution.<

>But there was not much of a proletariat in Vietnam. Since the 
>peasantry--in Marxist terms--is not a class per se, it is best to see 
>revolutions like the Chinese or Vietnamese not in terms of the immediate 
>social base at the time of seizure of power, but in terms of the 
>trajectory. The Vietnamese Communist Party intended to modernize and 
>urbanize the country through a planned economy and integration with the 
>Warsaw Pact bloc. History disappointed it.

That trajectory fits with my view that it wasn't a "proletarian revolution" 
in Marx's sense of the term.

It's true that a home-grown revolution -- like Vietnam or Cuba -- was more 
likely to get a better deal from the Warsaw Pact than places where the 
revolution was imposed from the outside by the USSR. However, there were 
costs, as Castro can attest. (I have an article somewhere about how the 
USSR cut off oil supplies to Cuba to ensure his endorsement of their 
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.)

> >I simply see that revolution as a nationalist revolution pushing for 
> economic development (because of the failure of capitalism to develop 
> such countries and the constant wars by France, the US, and China against 
> Vietnam), rather than being a classical Marxian proletarian revolution. <

>The only 'classical' Marxian proletarian revolution can take place in an 
>industrialized country, but as we know the contradictions of such 
>countries are not as extreme as they are in places like China or Vietnam.

Right. I see the rise of what some call "actually existing socialism" as a 
symptom of the uneven development of world capitalism.  Focusing on the 
period after the 1930s and engaging in gross simplification: in the rich 
countries, you see the wealth and urban working class necessary to Marx's 
socialism, but not the severe social crisis. On the other hand, in the poor 
countries, you see the social crises without the wealth and the 
proletariat. Different "ingredients" of Marx's scenario are seen in 
different places, so we see incomplete versions of Marx's socialism. In the 
rich countries, we see (at best) social democracy, while in the poor 
countries we see (at best) authoritarian socialism ("actually existing 
socialism"). At worst, the rich countries are like the US, with little in 
the way of a "social safety net," while the poor countries find themselves 
like Stalin's USSR or the Khmer Rouge's "Democratic Kampuchea."

(This notion comes from an article Giovanni Arrighi that appeared in the 
NEW LEFT REVIEW a decade or two ago and is in one of my many book boxes 
somewhere.)

> >The party-state seems more interested in preserving its own power. (Of 
> course, not being an expert on Vietnam, I look forward to getting more 
> information on this question.)<

>All this is discussed in Gabriel Kolko's excellent "Vietnam: Anatomy of a 
>Peace".

I'll look for it, though spending so much time with pen-l detracts from the 
non-job-oriented reading I do.

> >I don't know anyone who professes the theory that history moves forward 
> in a "unilinear fashion." <

>The Analytical Marxists.

haven't they mostly disappeared? or at least the ones who believed in the 
unilinear theory of history?

I'd think if I believed in such a theory, I'd see the rise of neo-Liberal 
capitalism as "progress." I guess that's one part of the explanation of why 
so many on the Left have shifted to the right.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Re: contradictions of capitalism

[Michael Perelman]

I want to thank Jim Devine for his exception post.  I might add one minor
point: by freeing capital to move to the places with the lowest standards for
the environment or for labor, it removes the incentives to improve technology
by making it more labor saving or environmentally friendly.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: re: the Vietnamese countryside

[Louis Proyect]

Jim Devine:
>I'm not a youngster (nor do I play one on TV), but in what sense was that 
>revolution "proletarian"? were wage-workers (proletarians) organized in a 
>workers' political party and democratically-run unions in state power? I 
>doubt it.

It was proletarian in the sense that the goal of the revolution was to
build socialism. If Ho Chi-Minh (or Mao) had waited in Social Democratic
fashion for a proletariat to emerge as a class, the country would still be
politically ruled from outside. As it stands now, it is only ruled
economically.

>Maybe the ideology of the CP of Vietnam could be called "proletarian," 
>since if I remember correctly that party adheres to "Marxism," originally a 
>pro-proletarian vision. But not only has the term "Marxism" been abused a 
>lot (e.g., by Stalin) but doesn't it go against historical materialism to 
>define a revolution by the official ideological tag that its leaders use? 

The people of Vietnam, following all revolutions in the 1917 vein, created
a state that is in transition between capitalism and socialism, but it was
by no means guaranteed that it would move forward in a unilinear fashion as
history has sadly demonstrated.

Louis Proyect

(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)

Fwd: POLITICS: My Day in the Movement

[Jim Devine]

the following is pretty funny and makes me nostalgic. Despite the author, 
no racism appears.

>SLATE POLITICS: Wed., May 10, 2000
>
>My Day in the Movement
>
>By Scott Shuger
>
>In the second semester of my freshman year at the University of
>Maryland, May 1970 to be exact, everybody was minoring in student
>unrest whether they wanted to or not. In my case, it was or not. I
>wasn't political. Prior to the daze of rage that swept campus that
>spring after the United States invaded Cambodia, Maryland had a
>reputation as a party school. The tip-off was the motto on the
>school seal: "Veritas et Coitus." And even though the expansion of
>the war inspired many Maryland students to seriously worry about
>what the world was coming to, the anti-war movement gave a lot of
>others new excuses to listen to rock on big speakers, smoke grass
>outside with impunity, and to meet the opposite sex.
>
>Soon, a rally was announced: a large demonstration protesting U.S.
>imperialism, genocide, and Saturday classes. Posters blanketed the
>campus, and articles dominated the pages of the student newspaper.
>One radical publicist even went to post a notice on the library
>door, but the cobwebs jammed his staple gun.
>
>Finally, the fateful day arrived, and the turnout was huge. The
>protest's organizers announced that they were going to block old
>U.S. Route 1, the street that runs right in front of the campus in
>College Park and takes you to the Dairy Queen. Upon hearing this,
>the governor instantly sprang into action. If any attempt were made
>to block Route 1, he said he would send in the National Guard. I
>guess nobody realized how much he liked going to the Dairy Queen.
>As soon as word of the governor's threat got out, students who the
>day before wouldn't have dreamed of going to a rally without
>cheerleaders made their way to the barricades.
>
>Not me, though. As I said, I wasn't very political. I made my way
>to a pickup basketball game behind the dorm as several hundred
>state troopers and National Guardsmen faced off against the
>students on Route 1. The officer in charge, wearing full battle
>dress, informed the swelling crowd through a bullhorn that, at 1
>p.m., the student gathering would be broken up. Meanwhile, back at
>the basketball court, I took a pass and wheeled to shoot. My ankle
>collapsed and so did I. As I looked up from the ground, an Army
>helicopter was buzzing the campus, and there was suddenly tear gas
>on the wind. It was 1 p.m.
>
>As my court-mates helped me to my feet and waved down a car to take
>me to the campus infirmary, the law swept across Route 1 and up the
>campus. On the drive over, we watched the steadily advancing line
>of soldiers and cops, some of them with German shepherds.
>
>A huge crowd of students converged on our car as it pulled up. As I
>was ushered into the infirmary, this freshly radicalized mass
>parted like the Red Sea. Spying my crippled condition, the crowd
>began shouting in support, "F*ck the Pigs!" I even heard shouts of
>"Viva la Revolución!"—a sure sign of outside agitators, since I
>never met anyone at Maryland who passed Spanish. I had been pegged
>as the first victim of campus fascism, the Che Guevara of College
>Park. Inside the building, I was rushed into the office of the
>campus doctor, who was tied up on the phone with his broker,
>desperately trying to unload some Cambodian rice futures. I
>couldn't wait for the market to stabilize, so we got back in a car
>and headed for the real hospital.
>
>The emergency room at Prince George's County General looked like
>something out of a Life pictorial on Khe Sanh. In the long line
>leading to the admissions window there were people in uniform with
>guns, people in handcuffs, and people screaming, bleeding,
>retching. As the wounded got to the front of the line, Brunhilde,
>R.N., asked from behind her window how they received their
>injuries. All the students in front of me were under arrest and the
>cops with them did all the talking—"This alleged perpetrator was
>allegedly alleging things about my mother when he tripped and
>fell." Apparently, Brunhilde felt that the Hippocratic oath had a
>political component. A lot of injured students were sitting around
>unattended, but a team of paramedics was feverishly working on a
>cop's helmet rash. As I approached the head of the line, my ankle's
>pounding increased, and I kept wishing that I had gotten a haircut
>the week before.
>
>Finally, my moment came. Brunhilde looked at me through cold steel
>rims. "OK, what happened to you?" "I got hurt playing basketball."
>"Right, and that guy over there"—a beefy hand gestured toward a
>vomiting hippie holding a blood-soaked towel against his scalp—"is
>having a tension headache. We won't admit you until you tell us
>what really happened. Next!"
>
>After a very uncomfortable hour of sitting around, the room thinned
>out a little, and I was at the head of the line again. Finally a
>bit of luck—Brunhilde was not there! A nice,

Re: Vietnamese countryside

[Jim Devine]

At 03:13 PM 5/10/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Jim Devine:
> >And we should trust a Communist Party with a monopoly of political power?
> >Louis, didn't you have some troubles a few years ago with the self-styled
> >Leninists of the SWP? doesn't that suggest some lessons about giving power
> >over to a minority?
>
>I am not talking about democracy. I am talking about identifying the class
>character of a state. The Hitlerite regime was undemocratic, but
>capitalist. The Roosevelt regime fighting it was both democratic and
>capitalist.

I don't think the issue of democracy should be separated from the class 
nature of the state. At least as I understand Marx, he believed that the 
proletariat would be a different kind of ruling class than previous ruling 
classes, that its rule would have to be democratic. His model -- based in 
historical practice rather than in abstract slogans -- was the Paris 
Commune. Democracy was needed if progress toward abolishing both classes 
and the distinction between the state and society was not to be 
side-tracked into the creation of a new class of those wielding state 
power. The problem, as I see it, with the places in which "actually 
existing socialism" prevailed is that such a new class developed. (NB: 
that's not the same thing as saying that a capitalist class developed, 
though in Russia a lot of the old CPers used their state power to turn 
themselves into full-scale capitalists.)

BTW, on the issue of democracy, it's not just a intra-national 
phenomenon.  I think that the winning of national independence (by Vietnam 
and other countries dominated by imperialism) was a step forward in terms 
of democracy. (Sometimes, unfortunately, nationalist revolutions ran 
roughshod over ethnic minorities, as with the Nicaraguans vs. the Miskitus.)

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Re: Re: Re: Vietnamese countryside (fwd)

[Jim Devine]

>... The argument that Marx anticipated Stalinism is completely a 
>historical statement, made out of context, which pays attention to "ideas" 
>rather than to circumstances of Stalin's Russia. Projecting Marx onto 
>Stalin or vice versa is an idealist reading of
>history. Ideas should be judged vis a vis circumstances, not circumstances 
>vis a vis ideas, especially in Marxian praxis (Reread Gramsci)!

I did NOT blame Marx for Stalin. You misread what I wrote. Rather, I was 
saying that Marx had some understanding of the problem of Stalinism.

> >Also needed is proletarian power.
>
>What a charming invitation! If you really trusted proleterian power, you 
>would try to understand, or at least appreciate, the circumstances and 
>social forces of Vietnamese revolution instead of saying that it was not a 
>revolution in Marxist sense.

this simply repeats something that Louis and I have already discussed and I 
have no intention to repeat that discussion. He and I attach different 
meanings to the word "proletarian."

>This way of thinking reminds me of bourgeois Kautsky who did not expect a 
>revolution in Russia because Russia was economically "backward", or the 
>circumstances were not yet ready. ("so let's postpone "mass democracy" 
>folks! because the "masses" are still "immature" kind of ELITIST way of 
>thinking)

ditto: Louis and I had a discussion about this. You misunderstand what I 
wrote. I'm in favor of "mass democracy" (except if that's simply a slogan 
which has some other meaning).

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine

Re: Re: Re: contradictions of capitalism

[Michael Perelman]

Brad, you are correct in a restricted sense.  However, I am fully convinced that
integration into the global economy will make it more difficult to for Africa to
make independent decisions in the long run.

Brad De Long wrote:

> >Also, I'm not defending a romantisized version of the traditional
> >farm.  I would
> >like to see progress, but I do not believe that the sweat shop is
> >the appropriate
> >agency for development.  As long as the choice is between the traditional farm
> >and the sweat shop, the case for the sweat shop will be stronger.
> >The corporate
> >press usually frames the choices that way.  I don't think that we have to.
> >
> >Michael Perelman
>
> But when you support quotas against imports of textiles from Africa,
> that is exactly the choice that you are making...
>
> Brad DeLong

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

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

Re: Re: British intervention in Sierra Leone

[Louis Proyect]

Jim Devine:
>I don't know much about Sierra Leone (even my ENCARTA CD-ROM is a box for 
>moving to a new office), but to what extent is the current anarchy a 
>_result_ of British actions in the past?

Sierra Leone is a British version of Liberia. Freed slaves were sent there
(capital is Freetown) where they looked after Great Britain's interests.
Drawn from all over western Africa, these ex-slaves lacked any common
language or culture. After missionaries turned them into a homogeneous
Christian community, they became the ruling class of the country with heavy
representation in the professions and commercial trade. There has always
been tensions between the "Creoles" (ex-slaves) and the indigenous
population. In 1961 Britain ceded independence and the non-Creole majority
assumed control. For the same reasons prevailing in Liberia, the country
has been torn apart by internecine violence over control over dwindling
assets, most especially the diamonds. Imperialism is rather embarassed by
the capture of a bunch of UN troops but I doubt that this will lead to a
large-scale "humanitarian intervention". 



Louis Proyect

(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)

Dubya Speeks

[Max Sawicky]

Reported in the Washington Post, May 5, 2000, Page C1.
Title:  "What's On W's Mind?  Hard To Say," by Dana
Milbank.

Nobody posted the article so I am compelled to extract
the actual remarks of Texas Gov. George W. Bush, quite
possibly the next president of the United States of
America:


"terriers and bariffs"   (meant to say, tariffs and barriers)

"cuff links" (meant to say handcuffs)

"tacular weapons" (tactical nuclear weapons)

"mential losses"  (missile launches)

"I hope we get to the bottom of the answer."

"This is Preservation Month.  I appreciate preservation.
 It's what you do when you run for president.  You've
 got to preserve."

"I denounce interracial dating."
(meant to denounce policies against interracial dating)

"obscufate"

"[I am] getting pillared in the press and cartoons."

"If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism
and polls and principles, come and join this campaign."

"I understand small business growth -- I was one."

"There is madmen in the world and there are terror."

"Rarely is the question asked:  Is our children learning?"
[my personal favorite]

"It was just inebriating what Midland was all about then."
[meant intoxicating]

"When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world and we knew
exactly who the 'they' were.  It was us versus them, and it
was clear who 'them' was.  Today, we're not so sure who the
'they' are, but we know they're there."

"We ought to make the pie higher."

"We can't take the high horse and claim the low road."

"[Internet millionaires] have become rich beyond their means."

"I don't have to accept their tenants."

"[Education is about more than] bricks and mortars."

"vulcanize" [meant balkanize]

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."



AND let's not forget George Senior:

"Please don't look at part of the glass,
the part that is only less than half full."


mbs

China bill

[michael]

Are the repugs. trying to pry some favors from Clinton or is the China
bill really in trouble.
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: Re: Chinese workers desert state sector

[Stephen E Philion]

Hi Michael, 
Sorry to respond so late. Private businesses tend to pay quite a bit more
than state companies, especially skilled positions. The desertion is a
combination of boot and attraction.  Of course, it depends on what kind of
skills you possess and the state of the SOE you're located in. But,
private businesses are the envy of SOE workers in one key sense, they get
paid wages on a monthly basis! I mean, *every* month they get paid. That
alone is a huge attraction these days in China. 

Steve


On Mon, 8 May 2000, Michael Perelman wrote:

> I understood that the private businesses pay less and have inferior working
> conditions.  Why the desertion?  It sounds like the boot.
> 
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
> 
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 

more on "free trade"

[Jim Devine]

more on "free trade," from Dean Baker's "economic reporting review," May 8, 
2000. He examines journalistic reporting on economic issues.

>AFRICA TRADE BILL
>
>"House Trade Bill for the Caribbean and Africa Passes"
>Eric Schmitt
>New York Times, May 5, 2000, page A1
>
>"House Vote for Textile Trade Ends Long Fight"
>John Burgess and Matthew Vita
>Washington Post, May 5, 2000, page E1
>
>These articles discuss the House of Representatives' approval of a trade 
>bill that would reduce tariffs on apparel and textiles on goods produced 
>in Africa and the Caribbean. While both of these articles refer to the 
>claims of  the bill's proponents, that the tariff reductions will aid poor 
>nations in both regions, it is not clear that they will necessarily have 
>much positive impact. As the Post article notes, the bill requires 
>that nations adhere to IMF designed structural adjustments programs in 
>order to benefit from the tariff reduction. * [emphasis added]
>
>There was also a competing bill, the "Hope For Africa" bill introduced by 
>Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., which placed debt reduction as its top 
>priority in helping these nations. This bill is not mentioned in either 
>article.
>
>Both articles note the defeat of a provision that would have allowed these 
>nations access to AIDS drugs at a low cost. The TRIPS agreement that 
>accompanied the last round of the GATT imposed U.S.-style patent and 
>copyright laws on developing nations, raising the price of AIDS drugs in 
>Africa by several hundred percent above their free market price. It is 
>unlikely that any benefits from this trade bill will come close to 
>offsetting the negative impact of the higher drug prices that African 
>nations will have to pay
>as a result of the TRIPS agreement.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Re: [weisbrot-columns] (fwd)

[Michael Perelman]

This discussion is of no interest to the list.  Why don't you two carry it on
off the list?

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Okey, I don't have time but I will respond!
>
> Ricardo wrote:
>
> >Mine,
>
> >Am only trying to argue that one cannot take on such a huge moral
> >burden as "liberation of third world from western oppression", or
> >from capitalism, without examining one's social position within the
> >West.
>
> Who argued for the liberation of the third world ONLY? The Marxist
> position is that one can not be liberated without the entire world being
> liberated. This is a true "internationalist" position, not a rhetorical
> third worldism. In so far as one part of the world benefits at the
> expense of others and a large OBSERVABLE gap exists, it is incorrect to
> imply that there is no problem with what is going.I am trying to identify
> the problem in the first place. The problem is that the world system is
> charecterized by multiple hierarchies with each staying at the top of
> hierarchy by extracting resources from the others. US, as the global
> hegemon, teaches Asians how to become capitalists so that Asian ruling
> classes can exploit their own working classes and labor in the region.
> We are not living in the WEST, as you claim we are. We are living in a
> world system charecterized by systemic inequalities. Your reluctance to
> see these inequalities prevents you from even taking aN hypothetical
> attitude to your own ruling classes.
>
> Remeber Marx's discussion of primitive accumulation. In that specific
> historical chapter of CAPITAL, Marx argues that the development of
> capitalism was possible by a forceful of "expropriation" of population
> from the land and formation of "free" workers thrown into cities as
> "rightless" proleterians. Coercion, not free will, was internal to
> capitalism to establish itself. What Marx identified hundred
> years ago has been taking place at the world system level as each country
> becomes capitalist. They go through the same sucking realities of British
> capitalism. Marx talked about how the factory conditions were resembling
> "slave labor" in Britian (including child labor).Marx also talked about
> how the development of British capitalism was contingent upon imperialism,
> colonialism and slave labor initially. Whether you beleive it or not,
> these things still continue. Are you gonna deny these REALITIES?. Are you
> gonna deny that the hourly wage labor in Dominican Republic is $1.64? Are
> you gonna deny that Nike capitalists are beating Vietnamese women? Are you
> gonna deny that Taliban fundamentalists stone women to death with the
> tanks barrowed from the West? Are you gonna deny that the US sells guns to
> Turkey (and its ruling classes)for killing Kurdish people, as well as its
> own Turkish progressives?
>
> >There's a real moral dilemma when a person living in it up in
> >the West demands that the TW refrain from western
> >There's a real moral dilemma when a person living in it up in
> >the West demands that the TW refrain from western
> >consumerism/technologies,  or when a TW immigrant who is really
> >westernized though still pretends to be from the TW,
> >receives a  hundred thousand or  more salary, collects
> >large research grants, has a lot of time off from teaching, as well
> >as many opportunities for travel and lecturing around the world - like
> >going
> >to Vienna, the old capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire,
> >criticizing the West,
>
> 1. This is indeed WRONG and politically problematic. Earning a western
> salary should not prevent you from criticizing capitalism. According to
> your logic, then, Marx should have never got his law degree at University
> of Berlin, or, Engels should have never worked as a clerk in export
> business and written articles for press. So what is the point with
> this political correctness for my sake? All of us are trapped in this big
> dilemma of trying to criticize capitalism and securing a position in the
> intellectual market place (unfortunately). You always bring this issue of
> foreigners' salary and third worldism card. Why? Many american (and
> western) leftist intellectuals also criticize the west and american
> militarism. I am really pissed when somebody "orientalizes" my identity
> (where are you Said?) to imply that I don't have the right to criticize
> what is unjust since I am so and so. Why is this "salary" issue a moral
> dilemma for us ONLY, WHILE IT IS ALSO A MORAL DILEMMA FOR YOU? Why do you
> persistenly create artifical distinctions for foreigners? From what I see,
> you are making vulgar culturalism here.
>
> 2. btw, I don't even own a salary.I am a foreign phd student trying to
> survive here.
>
>
> >or pretending to speak for the "peasant class"
> >or believing that their "radical" writing  is a form of political
> >engagement with "popular struggle".
>
> Who is saying this? Give example..
>
> >Be honest with yourself (and I
> >don't me you personally, Mine, nor 

RE: China bill

[Max B. Sawicky]

It was in trouble from the start.

Lots of people on both sides are apt to trade
votes for something unrelated to the bill.

It could still go either way.

mbs



Are the repugs. trying to pry some favors from Clinton or is the China
bill really in trouble.
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: Forwarded from Anthony Boynton

[M A Jones]

- Original Message -
From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2000 3:32 AM
Subject: Forwarded from Anthony Boynton


> Louis,
>
> Not too long ago there was a discussion on your list (Marxism) about why
> the Soviet Union fell apart.
>
> I would like to suggest that the real reason was the Lada.

There are some things right with this but lots of things wrong.

First, Anthony's comparisons of machine tool etc production are with
contemporary Russia, not with the USSR. A baseline of the mid-1980s, before
the almost total collapse of Soviet production particularly in sectors like
machine building, would show different results. Second, Ladas are clunky and
old-fashioned and prone to minor breakdowns. But they are rugged and will
get you from A to B even when A is in European Russia and B is the other
side of the Urals in western Siberia (I know because I've done it).
Believe me, when it's -30 deg centigrade outside and there is
no auto rescue service or indeed no
settlement of any kind for a hundred kilometres or more, you don't set off
in a vehicle you don't have some gut faith in. It's not like hopping into
your Jeep Grand Cherokee and driving across five miles of boulevards to the
mall to pick up a six-pack. Ladas are and were highly serviceable cars in a
society which wasn't a slave to the private car and didn't fetishise cars as
the only form of transport. In Soviet Russia there were alternatives. Buses,
taxis and trains worked; you could fly anywhere for a few roubles
(you can't any more).

The disasters inflicted by GM on US mass transit systems did not happen
there (they are now; Moscow, where more than 100,000 children now live in
the streets, has built a six-lane beltway to service its new elites who are
building walled, gated new suburbs for themselves). Soviet city-design was
ergonomic and eco-efficient. US urban landscapes are a social and ecological
disaster and in the era when the oil is running out they will prove
unsustainable (I'm not even going to mention the small matter of greenhouse
emissions and global warming).

The future of genuine mass transit for people living in the fSU lies in the
past: with rationally-planned systems in which private cars play an
impoprtant but minor part (the number of internal passenger-miles flown has
fallen by 90% in the past ten years: in the new era of democracy and freedom
to travel abroad, most ex-Soviet citizens are now more like open-plan
prisoners than ever they were). That the future lies in the past,
is true not only for Russia. Yes, greed
and envy are easy to excite; socialism is about winning mass consensus for
more livable, humane and collective solutions. Here in London, the car is on
the way out; a new Mayor has just been elected by a huge plurality on a
ticket whose main theme was beefing up public transport, introducing
congestion taxes on private vehicles, and turning central London into a
car-free zone. Even in the heart of the beast, facts sometimes speak loudly
enough to polluted, asthmatic, noise-infested citizens who spend an average
2.3 hours daily commute on roads where the average speed is now lower (in
Central London) than it was in 1920, to make socialist
arguments look like second nature and to make the car look like the
'infernal engine' Winston Churchill famously called it.

One more thing: I wouldn't be in such a hurry to dismiss Soviet weaponry.
What did the Vietnamese use to blast the US out of their land? Whose missile
shot down a Stealth fighter over Serbia last year? But of course, Soviet
cars might have been better if they hadn't had to spend so many efforts on
their weapons industries.

Mark Jones
http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList

RE: Re: Dubya Speeks

[Max Sawicky]

My favourite of his was the 1988 gem 'I never apologize for the United
States of America. I don't care what the facts are.'

Ya just don't get candour like that any more, eh?

Cheers, Rob.
-

Actually this quote would make perfect sense to
quite a few people here.  I don't think it was
a slip.

You have to be foreign to appreciate our
goofyness.  If we didn't have nukes, it
might be funnier.

mbs

Re: RE: Re: Dubya Speeks

[Rob Schaap]

Oh, quite a few foreigners know all too well it wasn't a slip, Max.  It's
still a gem, though.  Ebulliently abounding in pith, mebbe.

Cheers,
Rob.

>My favourite of his was the 1988 gem 'I never apologize for the United
>States of America. I don't care what the facts are.'
>
>Ya just don't get candour like that any more, eh?
>
>Cheers, Rob.
>-
>
>Actually this quote would make perfect sense to
>quite a few people here.  I don't think it was
>a slip.
>
>You have to be foreign to appreciate our
>goofyness.  If we didn't have nukes, it
>might be funnier.
>
>mbs

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, MAY 9, 2000

March employment data indicate the easiest places to find work are cities
with major universities, says The Wall Street Journal's "Work Week" feature
(page A1).  BLS says jobless rates are well below the national average in
Columbia, Mo. (1 percent), Charlottesville, Va. (1.3 percent), College
Station, Texas (1.6 percent), Ann Arbor, Mich. (1.9 percent), and other
college towns.  Student services and technology start-ups fuel the trend.
High unemployment persists in numerous farming communities.  Visalia and
Tulare, Calif., lead U.S. metropolitan areas with 18.8 percent unemployment.
Merced, Calif., and Yuma, Ariz., post jobless rates of 16.8 and 16.2
percent, respectively.  Other agricultural areas plagued by bad weather and
low commodity prices follow suit.

As employment costs rise, some unemployment benefits fall.  Firms paying
more to hire and keep talent may be cutting costs on workers they let go.
In the first quarter, the median period for severance pay for discharged
managers and executives was 17 weeks, down from 24 weeks a year earlier, the
Chicago search firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas finds in a new survey (Wall
Street Journal, "Work Week" feature, page A1).

Gasoline will cost an average of $1.40 to $1.45 a gallon this summer,
according to an estimate by the Energy Information Administration, the
forecasting arm of the Energy Department. ...  The EIA had predicted summer
gasoline prices as high as $1.80 a gallon before the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries decided in March to boost oil output.  Oil and
gasoline prices have been lower since that decision (Washington Post, page
E1).

There is a growing evidence that caring for the elderly is taking a big
financial toll on employees and their careers, says The New York Times (May
7, Money and Business section).  A recent study suggests that two-thirds of
workers who care for elderly relatives have lost out at work by foregoing
promotions, pay raises, and training opportunities.  The study focused on 55
people age 45 or older who spent more than 8 hours a week providing unpaid
care.  Although it involved relatively few participants, it is the first to
detail financial losses for providers, the researchers said.  It was
conducted last year for the MetLife Mature Market Institute in New York by
the National Center for Women and Aging at Brandeis University in Waltham,
Mass., and the National Alliance for Caregiving in Bethesda, Md. ...  For
workers in the study who were able to quantify the impact, the care has cost
an average of $659,000 over their lifetimes in lost wages, Social Security
and pension contributions, because they have taken time off, passed up
promotions or "plum" assignments, quit their jobs, or retired early. ...  

DUE OUT TOMORROW:  Mass Layoffs in March 2000


 application/ms-tnef

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

> BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 2000:
> 
> RELEASED TODAY:  Mass Layoffs in March 2000, indicates that 986 mass
> layoff actions by employers as measured by new filings for unemployment
> insurance benefits were reported during the month, according to BLS data.
> Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single establishment and
> the number of workers involved totaled 106,748.  Although the number of
> layoff events and initial claimants for unemployment insurance were the
> highest for March since March 1996, this was due in part to a calendar
> effect.  This year, 5 weeks of mass layoff activities were reported in
> March versus 4 weeks in 1996-1999.  The total number of initial claimants
> during January-March of this year, at 433,968, was the highest since data
> collection for this program began in April 1995.
> 
> The Employment Cost Index on a quarterly basis is not as accurate an
> indicator of compensation trends as the measure's year-over-year figures,
> the president of Joel Popkin Co. tells the National Association of
> Business Economists. One caveat, however, is that by concentrating on
> year-over-year data, ECI users might miss important economic turning
> points, he said.  In a shorter period of time -- about 6 months -- the
> consumer price index can indicate a trend in inflation, Popkin says (Daily
> Labor Report, page A-8).
> 
> By 2006, federal departments and agencies will need to replace more than
> 32,000 high-tech workers across the board because of turnover, deaths, and
> retirements, according to government estimates.  In addition, agencies
> will need to hire 4,600 more people to fill newly created computer jobs.
> But again, the federal government is competing against high-paying
> dot-coms for the same workers.  "If you graduate now with a bachelor's of
> science in computer information, typically you would become a GS-7.
> That's going to earn somewhere in the area of $28,000 to $30,000,
> explained a National Security Council's spokesman.  "That same person,
> with that same degree, can go out to the Dulles access road or Silicon
> Valley and earn $90,000 to $120,000." One agency that saw the coming
> shortage was Internal Revenue Service, which put job incentives in place 2
> years ago that have insured that its corps of 7,650 techies remained at
> full strength.  An accompanying chart of the federal white-collar work
> force shows that while between 1992 and 1998 the number of computer
> specialists in federal service have remained constant at over 53,000, the
> number of secretaries has decreased by 40.6 percent, contracting personnel
> by 13.7 percent, and air traffic controllers by 7.1 percent (The
> Washington Post, page A27).
> 
> Unemployment is now only 3.9 percent, its lowest level in 30 years, writes
> Richard Rothstein in The New York Times, page A23.  A dozen years ago the
> economy was in bad shape, with widespread unemployment.  The United States
> could not seem to compete with other industrial nations that, with
> productivity growth, made better and less expensive products. Schools were
> widely blamed.  The prevailing view was that high unemployment was mostly
> due to high school graduates who lacked the skills of German or Japanese
> workers.  Today the crisis is a dim memory. Yet shools are, at best, only
> marginally better, so prosperity cannot be the result of school reform.
> That means that schools were not to blame for the nation's earlier
> dot-doldrums. It seems that today's productivity growth stems from years
> of accumulated innovation, and that American schools do, after all,
> produce a work force with adequate skills to use new technologies. 
> 
> The ratio of decline in the price of computers has slowed in recent
> quarters, says Business Week (May 15, page 38).  As Michael Moran of Daiwa
> Securities America, Inc., notes, a big contributor to computer deflation
> in recent years has been rapid improvements in power and other features.
> The slowing rate of decline, he notes, may imply that the pace of
> innovation has eased somewhat.
> 
> A new study of drug costs by Brandeis University, backed by 25
> organizations, including General Motors and the American Hospital
> Association, tracked purchases of 1.4 million people served by pcs Health
> Systems, a pharmacy benefits manager in Scottsdale, Ariz.  The conclusion:
> In each of the past 3 years, drug spending rose a giant 25 to 28 percent
> and more than doubled for those over 65 (Business Week, May 15, page 59).
> 
> Business Week (May 15, page 195) predicts that with oil prices receding,
> total import prices will likely incease  0.1 percent in April, after a 0.3
> percent rise in March and a huge 2 percent gain in February.  They also
> say that export prices will likely rise 0.2 percent in April, on top of an
> 0.4 percent advance in March (Business Week, May 15, page 195).
> 
> Business Week's predictions for Producer prices indicate that prices of
> finished goods 

Jeffrey Sachs et al.

[Michael Keaney]

K
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

Greetings

The current issue of that fine radical journal, "The National Interest", has
a fascinating account of the roles played by the personnel of the now
defunct Harvard Institute for International Development in the economic
success story that is Russia. You can find an extract of the article at

http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/59/Wedelextr.html

Read in conjunction with Leo Panitch's latest NLR article, it offers an
interesting, complementary perspective on the US Treasury/IMF policy of
imperialism.

Michael K. 

Re: Re: British intervention in Sierra Leone

[Chris Burford]

At 09:10 10/05/00 -0700, Jim Devine wrote:
>At 07:47 AM 5/10/00 +0100, you wrote:
>>In the case of East Timor, progressives in the west, such as Chomsky, 
>>called for Western intervention.
>
>I don't think this is quite accurate, since Chomsky doesn't trust the 
>"West" to do the right kind of intervention.


This is accurate. I quote from the interview on Alternative Radio with 
David Barsamian on 8 Sept 1999 which Louis Proyect posted to this list on 
11 September 1999:

>There's very good reason to believe that if the Clinton Administration took
>a strong stand, made it very clear to the Indonesian generals that this
>particular game is over, it would be over.

and again

>NC: There is one last chance to save the Timorese from utter disaster. I
>stress "utter." They've already suffered enormous disaster. In a very short
>time span, in the next couple of days, probably, unless the U.S. government
>takes a decisive, open stand, this thing may be past rescue. It's only
>going to happen in one way, if there's a lot of public pressure on the
>White House. Otherwise it won't happen. This has been a horror story for
>twenty-five years. It's now very likely culminating, and there isn't much
>time to do anything about it.
>
>
>DB: Thanks very much.
>
>
>The number for the White House comment line is (202) 456-1414.

Chomsky's appeal was not based on trust at all. He gave a rational analysis 
of why the US government was in fact not to be trusted. Nevertheless he 
also argued why pressure on it to intervene might in fact be successful.


>>IMO this particular British involvement is progressive and is part of the 
>>developing process of world governance, so long as it assists the UN and 
>>the West African peace keeping force to re-organise. ...
>
>I'm all in favor of "world governance," but who controls the process of 
>that governance?

The imperialists. Unless we attempt to dictate the agenda.



>>I suggest that only left wingers who are in fact anarchists or pacifists 
>>would *in this particular context* denounce British intervention in 
>>Sierra Leone as imperialist in nature.
>
>I guess I'd say that having some kind of state (even if organized by 
>British imperialists) is better than a Hobbesian war of each against all 
>(anarchy). But as many critics of Hobbes (including John Locke, a patron 
>saint of neo-Liberalism) have noted, power corrupts and absolute power 
>corrupts absolutely. (To see proof of this proposition, look at Rupert 
>Murdoch.) The British will impose a kind of order that serves _their 
>interests_ (and that of their allies).

Of course. Nevertheless Britain does not have a history of armed 
intervention in Africa over the last 40 years in the way France does. It is 
likely that it has done this to increase its credibility with a wider 
constituency, including bourgeois democratic forces in Nigeria and South 
Africa. It therefore has a dual character, and at this point is probably 
helping the process of structures by which Africa might control its own 
contradictions.

Really though, there ought to be a subtler approach which avoids a Somalia, 
and includes reparations. If diamonds are financing the rebels the west 
could and should produce the money to buy the rebel leader off, and place 
him in a gilded cage. Meanwhile financing South African experts in conflict 
resolution to contain the more immediate problems giving rise to conflict.

With troops massing on the border between Uganda and Rwanda, and between 
Eritrea and Ethiopia, well financed conflict-resolution by African people 
themselves would be much the best.

How about a global tax on all arms manufacturers, especially those of 
Britain, the USA, France etc to finance such a centre of African conflict 
resolution? After all the Nobel prize is financed from arms sales.
Call it top-slicing the budget.

>What we need to look for is sources of order on the ground _in Sierra 
>Leone_. What are the forces there that can counteract the power of the 
>external forces so that a very minimum Sierra Leonean voices are heard in 
>creation of order? Are there any political movements that can replace the 
>"rag-tag guerilla army" in power? And what is the nature of that army? We 
>need more of a concrete analysis of concrete conditions
>
>Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Louis's comments about the class and ethnic composition of Sierra Leone are 
interesting. But I would still see this particular British intervention as 
progressive whereas I would see Britain's interference in Zimbabwean land 
redistribution as strongly reactionary.

Chris Burford

London.

Re: Re: Re: Vietnamese countryside

[Jim Devine]

I wrote:
> >I don't think the issue of democracy should be separated from the class
> >nature of the state. At least as I understand Marx, he believed that the
> >proletariat would be a different kind of ruling class than previous ruling
> >classes, that its rule would have to be democratic.

Louis Proyect responds:
>Yes, that's what Marx believed, but he didn't anticipate Stalinism.

Hal Draper has a lot of quotes in his KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION 
which he interprets as anticipating Stalinism. But I don't want to get into 
quote-mongering.

>Stalinism was undemocratic, but it defended socialized property relations 
>up until 1990.

As I suggest to Chris Buford in a recent message, state property _per se_ 
is not what socialists (including Marx) want. After all, ancient Egypt had 
state property in almost all means of production. State property is 
necessary, but not sufficient. Also needed is proletarian power.

Worse, the experience with Stalin and his gray bureaucratic successors (can 
anyone name them from memory?) disorganized the working class and 
encouraged deep cynicism. (Strictly speaking, the CPSU kept them 
disorganized, since such events as the Russian Civil War after 1917 
encouraged disorganization, as Isaac Deutscher shows.) The disorganization 
and cynicism of the working class meant that when the old USSR fell apart, 
there was little chance to stop the power grab by the rising oligarchy of 
gangsters and their US/IMF sponsors.

(BTW, the Russian workers' cynicism produced some good jokes: has anyone 
seen the BIG RED JOKE BOOK?)

>The question of why it shifted to supporting capitalism is the topic of 
>Kotz-Weir's book which I have to get to at some point.

It looks like a useful book and David Kotz is a smart guy.

>Last night there was a dreadful PBS documentary on Putin, which totally 
>omitted the role of the United States in causing one of the most 
>catastrophic economic collapses in modern history.

is that the FRONTLINE report? I've heard bits and pieces of a US National 
Public Radio series which is supposed to be in conjunction with FRONTLINE. 
The first one talked about the US contributions to that collapse. It was 
pretty mild, centering on "mistakes that were made." In fact, I haven't 
heard the word "mistakes" used more since the time I talked to a Stalinist 
who was defending his Master's blood-purges.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: [weisbrot-columns] (fwd)

[Ricardo Duchesne]

Mine, 

Am only trying to argue that one cannot take on such a huge moral 
burden as "liberation of third world from western oppression", or 
from capitalism, without examining one's social position within the 
West. There's a real moral dilemma when a person living in it up in 
the West demands that the TW refrain from western 
consumerism/technologies,  or when a TW immigrant who is really 
westernized though still pretends to be from the TW,  
receives a  hundred thousand or  more salary, collects 
large research grants, has a lot of time off from teaching, as well 
as many opportunities for travel and lecturing around the world - like going 
to Vienna, the old capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire, 
criticizing the West, or pretending to speak for the "peasant class" 
or believing that their "radical" writing  is a form of political 
engagement with "popular struggle". Be honest with yourself (and I 
don't me you personally, Mine, nor anyone here: you are carrying an 
argument with other cultural elites. Nothing wrong with that.

Re: Re: re: the Vietnamese countryside

[Jim Devine]

I wrote:
> > in what sense was that  [Vietnamese] revolution "proletarian"? were 
> wage-workers (proletarians) organized in a workers' political party and 
> democratically-run unions in state power? I doubt it.<

Louis answers:
>It was proletarian in the sense that the goal of the revolution was to 
>build socialism.

the kind of socialism built depends on which groups have the power in the 
process of building it. Which groups had the power? the CP?

>If Ho Chi-Minh (or Mao) had waited in Social Democratic fashion for a 
>proletariat to emerge as a class, the country would still be
>politically ruled from outside. As it stands now, it is only ruled 
>economically.

I wasn't asking them to wait, nor is it my job, as a resident of the major 
imperialist power and the major anti-Vietnamese force, to ask for such 
things. (BTW, the Social Democrats are sometimes right, so that using that 
tag doesn't scare me.)

I just don't see that revolution as "proletarian" unless the organized 
proletariat has a lot of power in creating that revolution. We should use 
words carefully, since clear thinking is necessary to the left's escape 
from its Big Funk in this era of the neo-Liberal moral plague.

I simply see that revolution as a nationalist revolution pushing for 
economic development (because of the failure of capitalism to develop such 
countries and the constant wars by France, the US, and China against 
Vietnam), rather than being a classical Marxian proletarian revolution. The 
nature of that "development" is defined by who's got the power. In some 
phases of the Vietnamese history (as I understand it) workers and peasants 
had some say in determining the nature of development. But since the war 
ended, the power of the workers and peasants has slowly faded, so that the 
ruling party-state has slowly succumbed to the continuing pressure from the 
US, IMF, etc. rather than politically mobilizing people against that 
pressure. The party-state seems more interested in preserving its own 
power. (Of course, not being an expert on Vietnam, I look forward to 
getting more information on this question.)

> >Maybe the ideology of the CP of Vietnam could be called "proletarian," 
> since if I remember correctly that party adheres to "Marxism," originally 
> a pro-proletarian vision. But not only has the term "Marxism" been abused 
> a lot (e.g., by Stalin) but doesn't it go against historical materialism 
> to define a revolution by the official ideological tag that its leaders use? <

>The people of Vietnam, following all revolutions in the 1917 vein, created 
>a state that is in transition between capitalism and socialism, but it was 
>by no means guaranteed that it would move forward in a unilinear fashion 
>as history has sadly demonstrated.

_which_ people of Vietnam? obviously some more than others. Those who had 
the most power in creating that state are likely to get the most benefits 
from that state.

"all" revolutions in the 1917 vein? does that include the Khmer Rouge 
revolution? that revolution also involved Marxian rhetoric (though it was 
profoundly anti-Marxian in practice, as I believe you agree).

Also, we should note the Vietnamese revolution was quite different from 
that of Russia in 1917, which did have elements of being "a classical 
Marxian proletarian revolution."

I don't know anyone who professes the theory that history moves forward in 
a "unilinear fashion." Do you? He or she must be lonely in this belief.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Dubya Speeks

[Rob Schaap]

>AND let's not forget George Senior:
>
>"Please don't look at part of the glass,
>the part that is only less than half full."

My favourite of his was the 1988 gem 'I never apologize for the United
States of America. I don't care what the facts are.'

Ya just don't get candour like that any more, eh?

Cheers,
Rob.

Re: Re: Dubya Speeks

[Rob Schaap]

>At 01:16 PM 5/10/00 -0400, you wrote:
>>Reported in the Washington Post, May 5, 2000, Page C1.
>>Title:  "What's On W's Mind?  Hard To Say," by Dana
>>Milbank.
>
>President Eisenhower, it is said, pretended to be inarticulate in order to
>have the "common touch" so necessary to success in US politics. He was, the
>same stories say, a closet intellectual.
>
>Frankly, I doubt that W is following that tradition.

Neither does Billy the Willy, though.  Mebbe if you are intelligent and
articulate, you can get away with it as long as you push the down-home
accent and say 'Amurka' a lot?  Someone should tell Al that you do have to
move your head a bit every now and then though ... he always reminds me of
the Thunderbirds.

F.A.B.
Rob.

American looneyism

[Rod Hay]

What is with the US. A confederate month in Virginia? How do they think
that they can get away with it?

Rod Hay

--
Rod Hay
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The History of Economic Thought Archive
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