RE: American looneyism
You don't get down here much, do you? We've got statues of Confederate war heroes (sic) honored by placement in public squares, state governments fly the stars and bars, so why not a Confederate History Month? (don't ask me what 'confederate history' is supposed to mean, as opposed to 'civil war history'.) mbs What is with the US. A confederate month in Virginia? How do they think that they can get away with it? Rod Hay
Re: Vietnamese countryside
Trotsky was very smart. So why did Stalin outsmart him in the struggle for power?
Re: [weisbrot-columns] (fwd)
This discussion is of no interest to the list. How do you know that?
Re: American looneyism
Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/10/00 10:01PM What is with the US. A confederate month in Virginia? How do they think that they can get away with it? CB: They know they can get away with it because they've always been able to get away with it. CB
Re: Re: Baseball and economic growth
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/08/00 04:11PM At 01:06 PM 5/8/00 -0700, you wrote: Yes, baseball is like craft-based capitalism; I think that the phrase "craft-based capitalism" is somewhat contradictory. I think a better phrase would be "craft-based commodity exchange." Even though professional baseball clearly reflects the class system it thrives in (though in surprising ways), the game itself is much more egalitarian than say, football. Baseball is egalitarian -- but also individualistic, because of the batter vs. pitcher battle which dominates the game. Football reminds me more of the army -- or of simple cooperation-based capitalism, with its hierarchy and its production process, which works more in parallel (everyone doing a different task, all at the same time) rather than in sequence (like an assembly line or a bucket-brigade). CB: Who says we can't do semiotic analysis ? How about baseball is a combination of proletarians ( the batter with the bat as a tool makes runs by hitting the ball) and peasants who are out in the field. But contradictorily the pitcher is also the capitalist who sets the process in motion with the pitch. The batter and the pitcher are in class conflict. Baseball relative to football is competitive era capitalism, and football is capitalism in the era of imperialism with trench warfare and taking territory like WWI. CB
Re: Re: [weisbrot-columns] (fwd)
I am not going to rise to your bait. Your love of stirring up controversy keeps you from being able to be a positive contributor to the list. Ricardo Duchesne wrote: This discussion is of no interest to the list. How do you know that? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[weisbrot-columns] (fwd)
I dont want to disrupt the deep discussion on the dictatorship of the proletariat; or perhaps I dont have to considering its strong similarity with what's going on below: the enlightenment trust in one's ability to achieve "pure moral insight": of living in a world system charecterized by systemic inequalities, yet reject the "dominant culture (US) and my own culture" yet become "a true cosmopolitan" in that same world system! Mine Doyran Phd student Political Science SUNY/Albany
Re: crime stats.
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/08/00 12:07PM Jim Devine wrote: What's the leftist explanation of this trend? A couple of years ago, I interviewed a bunch of crime pundits on the downtrend. The consensus was: 1) the decline of crack (driven, several of them said, by younger people seeing how ravaged their older siblings and neighbors were by the drug), 2) a smaller teen population, and 3) community policing. I can't vouch for these explanations, but they were given by people from the "left" to the center. ___ CB: I have to agree with Jim D. that the drop in unemployment would be a traditional left mentioned factor. Leftists usually argue that crime is economically based, and there is an obvious coincidence of the down trend in the two "stats" in this empirical case. CB
Re: American looneyism
Rod Hay wrote: What is with the US. A confederate month in Virginia? How do they think that they can get away with it? Not to apologize too much for U.S. lunacy, it seems like you Canadians are experiencing the kind of hard-right lunacy we did 10-15-20 years ago - Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, that Christian reactionary whose name I can't remember who's nudging aside that other nutcase Preston Manning, etc. etc. Doug
Re: RE: American looneyism
Max B. Sawicky wrote: You don't get down here much, do you? We've got statues of Confederate war heroes (sic) honored by placement in public squares, state governments fly the stars and bars, so why not a Confederate History Month? (don't ask me what 'confederate history' is supposed to mean, as opposed to 'civil war history'.) They would call it "War Between The States" history. My Yankee mind was stunned by my first ride down Monument Ave in Richmond. The monuments are of Confederate generals, one after another, on horseback. They face one way if they died during the war, and the other if they didn't; can't remember which earned the northern exposure. Doug
Re: Re: American looneyism
O we have our loonies. And you have named just a few. But I was asking in the Virginia case. Given the reaction to other actions of this sort. Why were they willing to risks the boycotts and the eventually retraction. South Carolina has backed down on the flag issue. I have visited the US often enough to see the Jefferson Davis' highways and the confederate statues, but the political climate has changed in the US since they were constructed. Already the governor of Virginia is backtracking. Rod Hay Doug Henwood wrote: Rod Hay wrote: What is with the US. A confederate month in Virginia? How do they think that they can get away with it? Not to apologize too much for U.S. lunacy, it seems like you Canadians are experiencing the kind of hard-right lunacy we did 10-15-20 years ago - Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, that Christian reactionary whose name I can't remember who's nudging aside that other nutcase Preston Manning, etc. etc. Doug -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: crime stats.
Charles Brown wrote: I have to agree with Jim D. that the drop in unemployment would be a traditional left mentioned factor. Yes, but the trend predated the recent lows in unemployment, and there's been a sharp drop in crime in NYC, where unemployment is still quite high (and the employment-population ratio quite low, lower than a comparison with the national U rate might suggest). Doug
Re: Re: Vietnamese countryside
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/10/00 05:29PM 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. ___ CB: Somehow I was thinking you might say that :). 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. __ CB: Do you think the "freedom" of U.S. academics from this disciplined Leninism results in better or worse intellectual products as compared with the SU ? Is "freedom" from the principles that Lenin championed in the best interest of the proletariat, the overwhelming masses of the population ? 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? _ CB: Yes, but deciding the issue between Louis and you is impacted by these more general aspects of the Marxist conception of democracy. More directly to your point, which has to do with the republican principle vs. direct democracy, Marx and Engels clearly advocated a republican form of government for socialism, not direct democracy ( New England town meeting) of the tens of millions. So, the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Marxist conception IS some minority ruling as the representatives of the overwhelming majority as in all republics. Engels and Marx also advocated a centralized instead of a federal ( as in the U.S.) form for the national government. Then to be historically concrete and realistic, the imperialist imposition of a permanent state of war or threat of war against the SU necessitated a militarization of the form of rule. All democracies in real history have disgarded many democratic forms in conditions of war siege. For example, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the U.S. Civil War. As I said, you and Lou are correct in noting that the SU in the period of Stalin also violated Marxist principles of democracy. Khrushchev details these in the 20th Congress report. But the Soviet state in the period of Stalin also did many things that were not only in the name of the proletariat, but in the best interests of the proletariat. This fact is significantly absent from your measure of the success of proletarian democracy in the SU at that time. Stalinist illegal violence was more against party members than the proletarian masses. So, the SU form was as close to the dictatorship in the interests of the proletariat as most actualizations of an idea for social forms have been in human history, with successes and failures in matching the idea. __ 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
Re: American looneyism
At 10:01 PM 5/10/00 -0400, you wrote: What is with the US. A confederate month in Virginia? How do they think that they can get away with it? hey, we're uncivilized. Live with it. In fact, you _have_ to learn to live with it, since we're trying to impose the "American model" on the world. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Forwarded from Anthony Boynton
At 10:32 PM 5/10/00 -0400, you wrote: 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. this is a very interesting note (though Mark Jones' criticisms largely seem to be on the mark). I understand the production problem with the USSR was not its technological backwardness. Rather, it was the failure to put the technology into practice, to produce high-quality products. Thus, the Lada. However, I understand that because the military sector was so important, the Soviet Union was able to get beyond these difficulties in many cases, especially when it came to high-tech weapons. An in-law of mine, who was actually born in Russia, claims that the Russians still have an advantage in some fields of weaponry. Mark, is this valid? (BTW, I think it's wrong to say that we're running out of oil. The current high prices are due to an artificial shortage, while the US and many rich capitalist countries are becoming more efficient at using oil, despite the utter wastefulness of SUVs and, for that matter, the car I drive. [Hey, I got it for free!]) I remember having a discussion with some Cubans in Havana in the late 1970s about the nuclear power plants that were to be built [I was on a trip there with the famous Michael Perelman]. I said: you know that the Soviets produce shoddy goods. Do you really want Soviet nuclear power plants. That stumped them for a minute. They replied: but the Soviets produce good military products, so their nukes should be fine. That stumped me ... but this was before Chernobyl (1986). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
US intervention
Chris, Not to horse a dead beat, but Chomksy called for the US government to intervene on behalf of the Timorese people by halting the flow of US weapons to the Indonesian armed forces and paramilitary units. Chomsky was not calling for US military intervention against the warriors of the client state of Indonesia. Seth Sandronsky One of the ways the world could make reparations to Africa is by giving support to the democratic resolution of its conflicts. This Time article characteristically pinpoints a dilemma for western capitalist governments. May 9, 2000 By Tony Karon In Kosovo, the West went to war to stop ethnic cleansing; in Sierra Leone the international community appears unable to muster the will and resources to stop a ragtag guerrilla band that has already killed and mutilated tens of thousands more people than Slobodan Milosevic's forces ever did. The British government has sent in 700 troops on the pretext of withdrawing European nationals. They have got out 100 so far. This is a typical excuse for imperialist intervention. Britain has also claimed it has secured Lungi airport for the United Nations. In Parliament the debate is between the Conservatives who demanded a strict assurance that the British involvement was only for the purpose of getting British and Euorpean nationals out, and the Labour government which kept the door open for a wider involvement. From the Guardian webpage today: Mr Cook said that the operation is proceeding "smoothly", but said that there is no timetable for its completion. In the case of East Timor, progressives in the west, such as Chomsky, called for Western intervention. 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 say that, conscious at this moment, that the British government deserves strong criticism for its interference in the developing land redistribution in Zimbabwe. 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. Chris Burford London Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Re: Re: Vietnamese countryside
I wrote: 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. quoth Charles Brown: CB: Do you think the "freedom" of U.S. academics from this disciplined Leninism results in better or worse intellectual products as compared with the SU ? I don't think this kind of comparison (the quality of intellectual products) can be made. Just as in the US, the quality of orthodox academics rose as the topic that they were dealing with became more distant from questioning the official ideology. Is "freedom" from the principles that Lenin championed in the best interest of the proletariat, the overwhelming masses of the population ? no. The point was that the quotations from Lenin were simply window-dressing. The academics would throw in a quote from Vlad, then ignore it and discuss whatever they were studying. The initial quote didn't hurt the quality of their work. More directly to your point, which has to do with the republican principle vs. direct democracy, Marx and Engels clearly advocated a republican form of government for socialism, not direct democracy ( New England town meeting) of the tens of millions. So, the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Marxist conception IS some minority ruling as the representatives of the overwhelming majority as in all republics. Engels and Marx also advocated a centralized instead of a federal ( as in the U.S.) form for the national government. I wasn't talking about direct democracy, which seems like nothing but a red herring. Strictly speaking, the Commune model that Marx endorsed wasn't "representative democracy." Rather, it was delegatory democracy, since the delegates could easily be recalled. Representatives can't be recalled with ease (it's like impeaching the president in most cases). Also, the delegate's pay were restricted from rising much above that of the average worker. Because of recall and the pay restriction, it's not the same as rule by a minority. (Also, Marx endorsed the end of the separation between the executive and the legislative branches.) Of course, recall and pay restrictions work differently (i.e., poorly) under capitalism. Here in California, recall is relatively easy, so that the organized right wing and the moneyed interests use it (just as they use the initiative system). If we had pay restrictions, that would mean that most of the time, only the independently wealthy could afford to stand for office. (Every once and awhile, some Republican advocates lowering representatives' pay, in order to produce this result.) Similarly, ending the separation between the executive and legislative branches is no big improvement under capitalism, as seen in the many cases of parliamentary democracy in Europe and elsewhere. Again, Commune-type democracy would work better with socialism in place. Then to be historically concrete and realistic, the imperialist imposition of a permanent state of war or threat of war against the SU necessitated a militarization of the form of rule. All democracies in real history have disgarded many democratic forms in conditions of war siege. For example, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the U.S. Civil War. Right. The problem is that the longer the external attacks (and threats) persist, the more entrenched the bureaucratic rulers become. It starts out as necessity, but eventually the officials start arguing the virtue of that necessity. The means become ends in themselves. (I've read old Soviet propaganda about the benefits of a one-party system (and it wasn't simply a matter of defending the country) and the fun little fairy tale about how the other political parties voluntarily disbanded during the 1920s.) If the US Civil War had lasted for a long time, the Lincoln-era restrictions on civil liberties would have become totally entrenched, just as the Cold War-era restrictions (HUAC, the FBI, COINTELPRO, etc.) became entrenched until people (including lawyers) fought hard and long against them. As I said, you and Lou are correct in noting that the SU in the period of Stalin also violated Marxist principles of democracy. Khrushchev details these in the 20th Congress report. But the Soviet state in the period of Stalin also did many things that were not only in the name of the proletariat, but in the best interests of the proletariat. This fact is significantly absent from your measure of the success of proletarian democracy in the SU at that time. Stalinist illegal violence was more against party members than the proletarian masses. not against the kulaks? So, the SU form was as close to the dictatorship in the interests of the proletariat as most
Re: [weisbrot-columns] (fwd)
Simulating activism is not the only way to be positive...guess I blew it again. I'll be on my periodical unsub anytime soon, anyways. I am not going to rise to your bait. Your love of stirring up controversy keeps you from being able to be a positive contributor to the list. Ricardo Duchesne wrote: This discussion is of no interest to the list. How do you know that? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: crime stats.
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/11/00 11:04AM Charles Brown wrote: I have to agree with Jim D. that the drop in unemployment would be a traditional left mentioned factor. Yes, but the trend predated the recent lows in unemployment, and there's been a sharp drop in crime in NYC, where unemployment is still quite high (and the employment-population ratio quite low, lower than a comparison with the national U rate might suggest). CB: Would there be comparable imperfections in the correlations with the other factors mentioned as cause of crime drop ? CB
RE: Re: Re: crime stats.
EPI is preparing a report which shows a strong link between crime rates and conditions in the low-wage labor market (i.e., better conditions, less crime, as one might expect). mbs Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/11/00 11:04AM Charles Brown wrote: I have to agree with Jim D. that the drop in unemployment would be a traditional left mentioned factor. Yes, but the trend predated the recent lows in unemployment, and there's been a sharp drop in crime in NYC, where unemployment is still quite high (and the employment-population ratio quite low, lower than a comparison with the national U rate might suggest). CB: Would there be comparable imperfections in the correlations with the other factors mentioned as cause of crime drop ? CB
Re: Re: Re: Vietnamese countryside
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/11/00 12:15PM I wrote: 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. quoth Charles Brown: CB: Do you think the "freedom" of U.S. academics from this disciplined Leninism results in better or worse intellectual products as compared with the SU ? I don't think this kind of comparison (the quality of intellectual products) can be made. ))) CB: What type of issue were you getting at with your "BTW" ? Sounds like you are raising an issue of intellectual freedom in the SU. ))) Just as in the US, the quality of orthodox academics rose as the topic that they were dealing with became more distant from questioning the official ideology. ___ CB: I don't know. The official ideology in the SU ( historical materialism) was of high intellectual quality , compared with that in the US. ___ Is "freedom" from the principles that Lenin championed in the best interest of the proletariat, the overwhelming masses of the population ? no. The point was that the quotations from Lenin were simply window-dressing. The academics would throw in a quote from Vlad, then ignore it and discuss whatever they were studying. The initial quote didn't hurt the quality of their work. __ CB: I have a lot of books from the Soviet Union for which this is not true. The quotes of Lenin are very relevant to what is being discussed. For example , I had one by Comrade Zivs , an attorney whom I met, for which your generalization is inaccurate. Perhaps, not everybody was in the same situation as your aquaintence said. __ More directly to your point, which has to do with the republican principle vs. direct democracy, Marx and Engels clearly advocated a republican form of government for socialism, not direct democracy ( New England town meeting) of the tens of millions. So, the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Marxist conception IS some minority ruling as the representatives of the overwhelming majority as in all republics. Engels and Marx also advocated a centralized instead of a federal ( as in the U.S.) form for the national government. I wasn't talking about direct democracy, which seems like nothing but a red herring. CB: May seem like one , but is not. You didn't use the term "direct democracy", but the concept is important for analyzing the subject you and Lou were discussing. All of the following questions you mention "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?" cannot be addressed without the concept of direct democracy. A "dictatorship by (of) the proletariat " has no sensible meaning without reference to "direct democracy." To ask was it the proletariat "running" the state, must mean some reference to direct democracy, if just to clarify the meaning of republic or representative government. "The" proletariat is a mass. A mass "running" the state is some type of direct democracy. Strictly speaking, the Commune model that Marx endorsed wasn't "representative democracy." Rather, it was delegatory democracy, since the delegates could easily be recalled. __ CB: All elected officials of the City of Detroit can be recalled too. All republican forms are "delegatory" forms. I wouldn't quite say Marx endorsed the Commune in the sense of a comprehensive theoretical model for a socialist state. It was more a specific experiment , which was valuable because it was an "actually existing" effort, and a source of one or two specific modifications of Engels and Marx's outline in _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_. Specifically, they said the proletariat could not just pick up the bourgeois state apparatus whole, but that it would have to be broken up. Also, this was a negative lesson from the Commune, a lesson from an error of the Commune. ___ __ Representatives can't be recalled with ease (it's like impeaching the president in most cases). __ CB: "with ease" has to be spelled out. Legally, all you have to do is gather the signatures and win the vote in Detroit. Practically, you are fighting city hall. There was just a recall petition circulated against the Mayor last year. The City Clerk suspiciously invalidated a huge number of signatures. __ Also, the delegate's pay were restricted from rising much above that of the average worker. Because of recall and
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, MAY 11, 2000: RELEASED TODAY: U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes -- April 2000, indicates that the U.S. Import Price Index decreased 1.6 percent in April. The decrease, the first since June 1999, was attributable to a large downturn in petroleum prices. Export prices also fell in April, down 0.1 percent, after increasing 0.5 percent in each of the previous 2 months. U.S. employers laid off 106,748 workers in 986 mass layoff actions in March, BLS reports. "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," BLS said. "This year, 5 weeks were reported in March versus 4 weeks in 1996-99." The total number of laid off workers during January through March of this year, at 433,968, was the highest since BLS began collecting this data in 1995 (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). Top executives of many of the largest U.S. companies said they expect inflation to accelerate this year as labor markets remain tight across the country. Gathering in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. for their spring meeting, members of the Business Council released their latest economic forecast, which included projections of only a modest slowdown in overall economic growth from its current vigorous rate, by the end of this year (Daily Labor Report, page A-17). __A majority of chief executives from giant companies like General Electric Co. and Microsoft Corp. expect economic growth to slow and inflation to worsen this year, as businesses struggle with the impact of rising interest rates and one of the tightest job markets in American history. Most of the business leaders believe long term inflation will hover between 2 and 3.9 percent, although more than a third said they were leaning toward the high end of that spectrum. The tight labor market has prompted many of the companies to raise wages to retain employees, and few of the executives expect conditions to ease this year (The Wall Street Journal, page A2).. Understanding and measuring electronic commerce for U.S. statistics is a new challenge for federal statistical agencies, BLS Associate Commissioner Deborah Klein told the agency's Business Research Advisory Council May 10. Klein, who heads BLS's office of publications and special studies, said like other dynamic areas of the economy, e-commerce is difficult to capture and quantify. However, its impact on the economy is currently quite small. An example, Klein said, is a Commerce Department estimate that e-commerce made up only 0.64 percent of retail sales in 1999. "People are surprised how small," Klein said. But Klein added that retail sales are only part of the scope of e-commerce. The data series doesn't capture, for example, online travel or brokerage services. In a BLS research paper, "E-Commerce and Government Statistics," Marilyn E. Manser, of the agency's office of productivity and technology, says the small size of e-commerce means "our current understanding of the economy is not likely to be significantly affected by any problems that may exist " in measuring these transactions. The Census Bureau has proposed a definition of e-commerce: "Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is any transaction completed over a computer-mediated network that involves the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods and services." BLS Commissioner Katharine Abraham told the advisory council about the agency's fiscal 2001 budget request for funding for a new time-use survey. The survey, Abraham said, would be similar to data series common in Europe but never attempted by the U.S. Abraham said this series would include time spent raising children and taking care of sick or elderly family members. Women's groups have pushed for the proposed survey, but the potential audience is much broader, Abraham said. Abraham said the first meeting of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee will likely take place June 15. The newly created panel will bring together the three main federal agencies, BLS, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Census Bureau -- to work on measurement and conceptual issues that cut across agency boundaries (Daily Labor Report, page A-13). As recently as 1989, the federal government employed more than 316,000 workers whose jobs were predominantly clerical. They accounted for almost 1 in 7 federal workers, says Michael A. Fletcher in The Washington Post "Federal Page" (page A33). But sweeping changes in information technology -- the ubiquity of voice mail, e-mail, the personal computer and more -- have not only reduced the government's need for secretaries and clerks, but also changed the nature of their work. The number of federal workers doing mostly clerical tasks has been reduced by more than half. They now account for 139,000, or about 1 in 13, of the federal government's 1.8
Power to the People
The power of the people By Sam Webb The hope of the ruling elite that the "Battle in Seattle" was a blip on the screen was unceremoniously crushed during the week of April 9-16 when tens of thousands of activists descended on our nation's capital to protest capitalist globalization. In the wake of these protest actions, the corporate ruling class is now forced to face what is its worst nightmare - the anti-World Trade Organization "Battle in Seattle" spawned a social movement ready to battle the transnational corporations at every turn. While gathered in Washington, this loosely constructed coalition demonstrated against everything from the suffocating debt on Third World countries to permanent trade status for China, to Star Wars and solidarity concerns to environmental degradation to AIDS to animal rights to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. While no immediate concessions were won, policy-makers in the capital and elsewhere were clearly alarmed by the militancy and mass character of the demonstrations. The venues in the course of the week were many, but the two outstanding events were the mass rallies - one at the beginning of the week and the other at the end. The Jubilee 2000 rally, inaugurating a week of people's activities, was notable in two important respects. For one thing, its main demand was the cancellation of the crushing debt developing countries owe to private and public institutions in the advanced capitalist countries. And rightfully so. Perhaps no other demand would bring such immediate relief to developing countries that are languishing in utter poverty due to the many-sided effects of globalization. Moreover, it enjoys extensive support in the developed and developing world alike. For another thing, faith-based organizations were heavily represented at Jubilee 2000. Their presence opens up new avenues to reach millions of faith-based people who normally might shy away from social struggle, but given the right circumstances could be activists for global economic justice. If the Jubilee 2000 rally got the week off to a good start then the rally a week later against the IMF and the World Bank was the people's equivalent to the Super Bowl. Seldom have I participated in a mass action so militant, so politically advanced, so able to creatively combine tactics and fun. According to the AFL-CIO, there were 30,000 participants, mainly young people. Thousands engaged in civil disobedience and more than 1,000 were arrested. The police had to allow a noisy and raucous march through capital streets. Even before the dust had settled on the streets of Washington. prominent policy makers in higher circles were re-examining the architecture, rules and policies governing the global economy. This reappraisal, to be sure, was prompted by earlier events, especially the economic crisis in Southeast Asia and the ensuing financial contagion that nearly engulfed the world. But it is also unmistakably a response to the pressure coming now from this growing mass movement against capitalist globalization. This is remarkable. Consider for a moment: in a short space of time this movement has not only challenged the very legitimacy of the global economic order, but has introduced the concerns and language of globalization into millions of American households. Among a growingsection of the American people, there is something rotten with the transnational corporations TNCs and the global institutions that do their bidding. The only sour note struck during the entire week was labor's rally. Held on the Capitol steps, its theme was "No Blank Check, No Permanent Trade Status for China." In other words, labor, contrary to its own best interests, is opposing normalizing relations with the most populous country in the world. That rally included speeches that were throwbacks to the Cold War period. To make matters worse, Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan spoke at the Teamsters rally earlier in the day. It would be premature, however, to say that the labor movement has crashed on the shoals of the Cold War, to say that the anti-China campaign is the death knell of labor's forward march. Why do I say this? First, the Cold War is over and, therefore, cold-war rhetoric and policies don't resonate among the American people like they once did. Is there any more compelling example than the refusal of the millions of people to be swallowed up in anti-communist hysteria in the Elian Gonzalez case? Secondly, the pressure coming from the ultraright and TNCs - not to mention the growing anti-corporate consciousness - make it difficult to turn China's labor record into the foremost concern of our nation's working people. Thirdly, the anti-China campaign is neither universally nor enthusiastically embraced by labor's leadership. The more clear-headed of labor's leaders realize that a cold-war campaign against China
RE: American looneyism EVERYWHERE
Anyone interested in being disabused of the notion that only the Southern U.S. is filled with racist and misleading historical sites should read James Loewen's excellent new book: "Lies Across America: What Our Historical Sites Get Wrong" (New Press, 1999). The book takes the reader on a tour of the entire country, and shows how ruling class history (and simply bad history) is often "literally etched in stone" on the U.S. landscape. It's amusing illuminating. Chris - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2000 10:51 AM Subject: [PEN-L:18788] Re: RE: American looneyism Max B. Sawicky wrote: You don't get down here much, do you? We've got statues of Confederate war heroes (sic) honored by placement in public squares, state governments fly the stars and bars, so why not a Confederate History Month? (don't ask me what 'confederate history' is supposed to mean, as opposed to 'civil war history'.) They would call it "War Between The States" history. My Yankee mind was stunned by my first ride down Monument Ave in Richmond. The monuments are of Confederate generals, one after another, on horseback. They face one way if they died during the war, and the other if they didn't; can't remember which earned the northern exposure. Doug
Re: US intervention
At 09:12 11/05/00 -0700, you wrote: Chris, Not to horse a dead beat, but Chomksy called for the US government to intervene on behalf of the Timorese people by halting the flow of US weapons to the Indonesian armed forces and paramilitary units. Chomsky was not calling for US military intervention against the warriors of the client state of Indonesia. Seth Sandronsky What Chomsky called for is clear in the archives of PEN-L. Yes he did not call for military intervention by the US. He called for massive pressure by the US to force the IMF to bring Wiranto to heel. And Wiranto was indeed brought to heel. Yes it was for the Timorese people, but it was absolutely and explicitly by using the IMF as an global organ of political control. The British intervention is different. It has just been given looser boundaries. Britain is probably playing for Nigeria to intervene again and for Britain to get more contracts to train the Nigerian army, while other countries of the west pay for it all. This is one of the ways Britain tries to box above its weight in international affairs. Nevertheless if it helps the Africans to police their own continent it could be progressive. Chris Burford London
The real price of gas: $15 a gallon?
[of course, if you paid the proper price for the stuff you'd be lucky to be even driving a Lada... Mark] The Real Price Of Gas Executive Summary This report by the International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA) identifies and quantifies the many external costs of using motor vehicles and the internal combustion engine that are not reflected in the retail price Americans pay for gasoline. These are costs that consumers pay indirectly by way of increased taxes, insurance costs, and retail prices in other sectors. The report divides the external costs of gasoline usage into five primary areas: (1) Tax Subsidization of the Oil Industry; (2) Government Program Subsidies; (3) Protection Costs Involved in Oil Shipment and Motor Vehicle Services; (4) Environmental, Health, and Social Costs of Gasoline Usage; and (5) Other Important Externalities of Motor Vehicle Use. Together, these external costs total $558.7 billion to $1.69 trillion per year, which, when added to the retail price of gasoline, result in a per gallon price of $5.60 to $15.14. TAX SUBSIDIES The federal government provides the oil industry with numerous tax breaks designed to ensure that domestic companies can compete with international producers and that gasoline remains cheap for American consumers. Federal tax breaks that directly benefit oil companies include: the Percentage Depletion Allowance (a subsidy of $784 million to $1 billion per year), the Nonconventional Fuel Production Credit ($769 to $900 million), immediate expensing of exploration and development costs ($200 to $255 million), the Enhanced Oil Recovery Credit ($26.3 to $100 million), foreign tax credits ($1.11 to $3.4 billion), foreign income deferrals ($183 to $318 million), and accelerated depreciation allowances ($1.0 to $4.5 billion). Tax subsidies do not end at the federal level. The fact that most state income taxes are based on oil firms' deflated federal tax bill results in undertaxation of $125 to $323 million per year. Many states also impose fuel taxes that are lower than regular sales taxes, amounting to a subsidy of $4.8 billion per year to gasoline retailers and users. New rules under the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 are likely to provide the petroleum industry with additional tax subsidies of $2.07 billion per year. In total, annual tax breaks that support gasoline production and use amount to $9.1 to $17.8 billion. PROGRAM SUBSIDIES Government support of US petroleum producers does not end with tax breaks. Program subsidies that support the extraction, production, and use of petroleum and petroleum fuel products total $38 to $114.6 billion each year. The largest portion of this total is federal, state, and local governments' $36 to $112 billion worth of spending on the transportation infrastructure, such as the construction, maintenance, and repair of roads and bridges. Other program subsidies include funding of research and development ($200 to $220 million), export financing subsidies ($308.5 to $311.9 million), support from the Army Corps of Engineers ($253.2 to $270 million), the Department of Interior's Oil Resources Management Programs ($97 to $227 million), and government expenditures on regulatory oversight, pollution cleanup, and liability costs ($1.1 to $1.6 billion). PROTECTION SUBSIDIES Beyond program subsidies, governments, and thus taxpayers, subsidize a large portion of the protection services required by petroleum producers and users. Foremost among these is the cost of military protection for oil-rich regions of the world. US Defense Department spending allocated to safeguard the world's petroleum resources total some $55 to $96.3 billion per year. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a federal government entity designed to supplement regular oil supplies in the event of disruptions due to military conflict or natural disaster, costs taxpayers an additional $5.7 billion per year. The Coast Guard and the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration provide other protection services totaling $566.3 million per year. Of course, local and state governments also provide protection services for oil industry companies and gasoline users. These externalized police, fire, and emergency response expenditures add up to $27.2 to $38.2 billion annually. ENVIRONMENTAL, HEALTH AND SOCIAL COSTS Environmental, health, and social costs represent the largest portion of the externalized price Americans pay for their gasoline reliance. These expenses total some $231.7 to $942.9 billion every year. The internal combustion engine contributes heavily to localized air pollution. While the amount of damage that automobile fumes cause is certainly very high, the total dollar value is rather difficult to quantify. Approximately $39 billion per year is the lowest minimum estimate made by researchers in the field of transportation cost analysis, although the actual total is surely much higher and may exceed $600 billion. Considering that researchers
Theodor Bergmann
I have the highest regard for Theodor Bergmann, the 84 year old editor of
the Hamburg-based magazine "Sozialismus," who spoke last night at the
Brecht Forum on "The German Anti-Nazi Left". Three years ago the magazine
entered into a fraternal relationship with Monthly Review, which is edited
by Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, themselves well-known and respected
old-timers. Not that I have anything against young radicals, but men and
women in their 80s who are still going strong deserve our special respect.
"Sozialismus" was also the first serious journal to print something I
wrote, namely my puckish report on the last Rethinking Marxism conference,
titled "Wissen-shaftskriege" (Science Wars). It told the story of how
female Marxist graduate students from India nearly drove a terminally
long-winded Etienne Balibar from the stage and how during the aftermath of
the protest conference organizers tried to root out a Sokalite conspiracy
that presumably was responsible. (There was no such conspiracy.)
Bergmann was a member of the youth group of the Left Communists in the
1920s, a party that Cochranite Erwin Baur's mother belonged to as well. In
an interview I conducted with him recently, Erwin explained that it was
natural for him to end up in the American Trotskyist movement in the 1930s
because as he was growing up talk around the dinner table focused on the
evils of the capitalist system and the inadequacy of the mass Communist
Parties. Erwin, a life-long UAW militant and currently a member of
Solidarity, is the same age as Theodor and another example of how to stand
up to the system over the long haul.
The German Left Communists were a split from the party led by August
Thalheimer and Heinrich Brandler. They, along with Paul Levi, were the
ideological heirs of Rosa Luxemburg and usually showed better judgement
than the Comintern during the 1920s. For example, Paul Levi proposed a
united front between Communists and Socialists long before Hitler was a
major factor in German politics. When the Comintern instructed the German
Communists to instead follow a sectarian line, Levi took his opposition
public. For this he was expelled, the first in a series of talented
revolutionaries driven from the party. Their sin was in believing that
German Marxism alone was responsible for the fate of the German working
class in the final analysis.
In the article "Rosa Luxemburg's Political Heir: An Appreciation of Paul
Levi" that appeared in the Nov.-Dec. 1999 New Left Review, author David
Fernbach cites a January 1921 letter from Levi to the German party on the
seriousness of the problems in dealing with the Comintern:
"[I]f the Communist International functions in Western Europe in terms of
admission and expulsion like a recoiling cannon.., then we will experience
the heaviest setback.. . [Our Russian] comrades did not clearly realize
that splits in a mass party with a different intellectual structure than,
for example, that of the illegal party.. cannot be carried out on the basis
of resolutions, but only on the basis of political experience."
January 1921? This was before the Comintern supposedly went downhill?
Clearly the best thing for the German working class would have been if the
Comintern had left it alone or at least treated it in the respectful manner
that Fidel Castro treats other socialists today rather than trying to
browbeat them into blind loyalty.
The other major ideological influence on the Left Communists was Bukharin,
who is the subject of one of Theodor Bergmann's many books.
There are two dominant interpretations of Bukharin today, one--based on
Stephen Cohen's biography--is that of a liberalizing bureaucrat who
anticipated Gorbachev. The other, part of Trotskyist orthodoxy, is that of
Bukharin as friend of rich peasants. To reduce Bukharin to this formula
would be the same as characterizing Trotsky only as the Russian
revolutionary who "underestimated the peasantry."
John Bellamy Foster's brilliant new "Marx's Ecology" reveals another side
of Bukharin: an ecosocialist who continued in the vein established by Marx
in his examination of the problem of soil fertility. He singles out this
paragraph from Bukharin's "Historical Materialism," which describes the
'metabolic' process that unites nature and society, a theme that is present
in Volume Three of Capital. This metabolic force, according to Bukharin:
"is the fundamental relation between environment and system, between
'external conditions' and human society... The metabolism between man and
nature consists, as we have seen, in the transfer of material energy from
external nature to society Thus, the interrelation between society and
nature is a process of social reproduction. In this process, society
applies its human labor energy and obtains a certain quantity of energy
from nature ('natures material,' in the words of Marx). The balance
between expenditures and receipts is here obviously the decisive element
for the growth of
Sowing Dragons
On Tue, 9 May 2000, Louis Proyect crossposted from the Baltimore Sun: MALNUTRITION IS EPIDEMIC: ROUGHLY HALF OF ALL CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 5 ARE STUNTED FOR LACK OF FOOD. HUNGER AND A GROSSLY INEFFICIENT AID SYSTEM HAVE KEPT VIETNAM'S POVERTY RATE THE HIGHEST IN THE REGION: THE WORLD BANK ESTIMATING THAT 51 PERCENT OF PEOPLE IN VIETNAM ARE IMPOVERISHED, COMPARED WITH 16 PERCENT IN THAILAND. Yes, but things were much worse in the pre Doi Moi period, when the Government simply lied about malnutrition and poverty and pretended economic problems didn't exist. The economic growth since 1985 is real enough. In Hanoi, the prostitutes work under cover of the city's many parks; in Ho Chi Minh City, it's a different story: The prostitutes, driving up and down the main drag between the Saigon River and the old cathedral, call out to customers from their mopeds. So you have working women, earning money for themselves, on mopeds -- a mobile proletariat, as it were. Horrors! As opposed to us brain-workers on the Net, who are lucky enough to be able to retail our neurons instead of our reproductive systems. Vietnam remains an intensely patriarchal society, where violence against women is normal and accepted; many of those prostitutes were horrifically abused by family members, and going back to the village, where brutally authoritarian family traditions are still the norm, is not an option. The more serious question is this: what *can* the Left offer as a developmental model to Vietnam? And no, telling them to dye their hair blond and learn Swedish won't cut it, Sweden had 150 years to assimilate primitive accumulation and another 100 years to export its way to metropole status. Vietnam is up against the heavy artillery of Athlons and Pentiums, Toyotas and Mercedes right here and now: how do they fight the neocolonial beast? -- Dennis
Re: Re: Re: Re: Clarification about African trade(fwd)
I agree with Micheal. Workers earning their livings in sweatshops do not even get a living wage. Let's not make the situation look better. Particulary, women workers are more vulnerable to exploitation in this process.It is true that most of the women in this part of the world come to cities to find jobs in order to escape themselves from old fashioned rural patriarchy. Yes, they prefer to work in Nike rather than in rice fields. What happens is that they are now exploited by capitalist bosses who use them as slave labor. But they're better off than they would be if they weren't exploited by capitalist bosses, right? Didn't Joan Robinson understand this? Brad DeLong -- This is the Unix version of the 'I Love You' virus. It works on the honor system. If you receive this mail, please delete a bunch of GIFs, MP3s and binaries from your home directory. Then send a copy of this e-mail to everyone you know...
