Re: Re: Racism and Ecology.
Louis Proyect wrote: Carrol: in astronomy or esp I don't know. That astronomy is pretty fishy stuff. The astronomy Got me! :-) Carrol
Re: Re: China and GM food
The development of GM foods in China is a very mixed blessing. Companies such as Monsanto are quite active there and may become more active as other countries place barriers on the development of GM seeds. The present trend towards capitalism in China will only be furthered. The development of herbicide resistant plants for example increases dependence upon pesiticdes developed by companies such as Monsanto. On the other hand there are potentially progressive and useful trends as well. For example genetically engineered rice with higher vitamin A content. Shiva's comments on this are really for the birds. She will go to any length to imagine difficulties with any GM application. She claims for example that people will get too much vitamin A and this great traditionalist wants Asians to change their diet to get vitamin A. Shiva is not even in favor of genetic engineering of drought resistant plants, plants that might be a great aid to subsistence farmers in drought-stricken areas. China is not blessed with any effective opposition NGO's and environmental groups that might help avoid potentially disastrous mistakes. While in Europe the risks of GM seeds are probably over-stressed, in China any risks will likely be ignored. Cheers, Ken Hanly Louis Proyect wrote: Whatever ecological reservations progressive people may have about this, it is entirely understandable that a country like China needs to make a major push to gain relative advantage in the world. This would release vast amounts of labour power and purchasing power for economic transformation of the east Asian region. Chris Burford Economic transformation? You are referring to capitalism in rather neutral terms, it seems. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Cinton Fungus (fwd)
Emilio Apocalypse Now By Alfredo Molano B. The Anti-Narcotics Brigade, in a victory march, will open door after door in Putumayo and Caqueta so that Carlos Castano's troops can, in Mrs. Albright's words "extend democracy to the south". EL ESPECTADOR Sunday, 25 June 2000 Ever since I read news of the approval of the two trillion Colombian pesos to strengthen the "oldest democracy in South America" black butterflies in my stomach have not stopped fluttering. How many Colombians, who today are alive, have dreams, and sweat doing odd jobs, will die with the decision of the United States Congress? Do the settlers of Caño Mosco, pushed into growing coca by the landowners of Villanueva who robbed them of their lands, know what awaits them? What are the dentist, the carter, the motorboatman, the mayors office employee of Pinuña Negra, innocent of the fact that the bombs that will kill them are already made and that the helicopters that will fire them are ready to take off, doing? Tomorrow, while Senator Lotts boys continue getting high on the heroin produced by the Mujadeen that defeated the Russian Communists in Afganistan a few years ago, or on the cocaine that their new allies in southern Bolivar department produce, in the mountains of Almaguer, Cauca, the peasants will be left with the sockets of their own eyes to hide in because everything else will be scorched earth. The Anti-Narcotics Brigade, in a victory march, will open door after door in Putumayo and Caquetá so that Carlos Castaños troops can, in Mrs. Albrights words "extend democracy to the south". Each day, reports of human rights violations will attribute less and less responsibility to the Armed Forces for obvious, evident, and tacit reasons. And Senator Helms will pass them over to Senator Leahy, who will not be able to say anything. Perhaps General Wilhelm will land at the Tres Esquinas base to distribute cans of American powdered milk, American corn, and American deviled meat, and a photo of the American First lady to 20 displaced families prepared especially for the occasion while General McCaffrey copiously gives out an English primer with the basic principals of the International Human Rights, put into practice by him in the Persian Gulf War. The Minister of Defense, without a tie, as is customary these days, will frenetically applaud the exemplary act of generosity and sovereignty. I do not want to think of what awaits the small black children who try to fly kites made from potato chip packages on the banks of the Atrato River, the day that the paramilitaries are given the green light to finish off even the seeds as the chulavitas (the Conservative paramilitaries during the Violence period) did in Rovira, Tolima in the 1950s. Nor, of what will happen to the Uwa Indian people when the national army, with painted faces, laser sensors, and grenade launchers, carry out an aerial operation on their sacred lands to show off the Black Hawk helicopters, whose makers managed to prevail in the Senate after extensive lobbying. I wouldnt want to imagine - today is the day of Saint John, who wrote - "and there were lightening bolts and thunder and a great tremor on the earth" - what 40,000 guerrillas armed to the teeth will do, once they step away from the negotiating table and go out to wage war without quarter and with no return. I am not going to read - in a way I have already read them - the headlines of the media exalting the bravery and abnegation of the U.S. advisors that sacrifice their golf games on the greens of the School of the Americas to come and "give us a hand" as Luis Alberto Moreno would say. I would prefer to read within a few years, God-willing, the reports of the diverted funds, crooked dealings, payoffs, bribes, and the trafficking of cocaine and heroin on the part of the new allies in defense of the oldest democracy in Latin America, in order to write, if I am still able: "Live - and Learn". Weekly News Update on the Americas * Nicaragua Solidarity Network of NY 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012 * 212-674-9499 fax: 212-674-9139 http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * CLM-NEWS is brought to you by the COLOMBIAN LABOR MONITOR at * * http://www.prairienet.org/clm * * and the CHICAGO COLOMBIA COMMITTEE * * Email us at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or * * Dennis Grammenos at [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To subscribe send request to [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * subscribe clm-news Your Name * Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Re: China and GM food
At 19:48 28/06/00 -0400, you wrote: Whatever ecological reservations progressive people may have about this, it is entirely understandable that a country like China needs to make a major push to gain relative advantage in the world. This would release vast amounts of labour power and purchasing power for economic transformation of the east Asian region. Chris Burford Economic transformation? You are referring to capitalism in rather neutral terms, it seems. Louis Proyect Yes, I think I was using neutral terms. Many people have strong views already about whether China is fully capitalist. The Chinese Party appears determined to try to keep some control of the state and the economy and would no doubt continue to argue that its acceptance of greater economic flexibility is in the ultimate interests of socialism. They argue with more conviction that it is in the ultimate interests of China. What I was referring to in neutral terms was the likelihood of an enormous increase in the technological means of production of agricultural goods in China, the expansion of the market and the release of labour power. This will have enormous geopolitical significance for a multi-polar economic world. Many will see this as increased exploitation of the land and the labour force. However in the struggle against global unequal exchange it is very difficult for any developing country, whether capitalist, socialist or social democrat, to retain a higher proportion of its surplus product for reinvesting locally. I am far from enthusiastic about these reports from China, but they look very significant and something we should watch. Chris Burford London
Re: re: energy
Rod Hay wrote: Okay, Mark, please explain why no other energy technology is feasible. This kind of thing is debated on Jay Hanson's list, where ex-vice presidents of PV companies argue that PV's are the future and people answer them like this: From: Mark Boberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Jun 28, 2000 11:02pm Subject: PV (was RE: Re: Lynch recap) --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Glenn Lieding [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Investing today's oil-energy in manufacturing, deploying, and maintaining PV, in order to realize an energy return on that investment in the future, makes sense if the average rate of energy made available by the PV, multiplied by the lifespan of the PV, exceeds the total energy invested. A real world test of PV viability would be for a PV manufacturer to commit to building and operating a PV production facility using only PV power to do it. Solarex (BPAmoco) has a plant with an impressive all-PV roof. I sent them an Email asking whether that plant was self sufficient. Their answer was: no, actually we are the second largest electricity consumer in the county. So, PV industry, if you're listening, here's the challenge: 1) Using your coolest, best, most efficient technology, build say 10 megawatts of PV panels. Acquire all the necessary mounts,trackers, inverters, wire, batteries, controllers, etc. We won't even count the energy required to make all this, its a freebie. 2) Find the best solar site in the World and set up your system there. 3) Locate, lease, and set up the equipment necessary to construct a PV plant from scratch. Select versions of all this stuff that will run on PV electrical power (invent new versions as required - an electric backhoe comes to mind). Use a PV powered truck, train, boat to bring the equipment and raw materials to the site. The lease cost of this stuff will be charged to the future PV production of the plant on an energy basis (ie equivalent PV panel lifetime energy production). 4) Saw the wood, smelt the steel, burn the limestone for the cement, crush the gravel, machine the bolts, dig the dirt,etc, etc, and erect the building, all using the PV from your 10 megawatt system. 5) Locate, lease, and set up the equipment necessary to produce PV panels complete (silicon production, wafer production, panel assembly, etc.) The lease cost for this stuff will also be charged to the future PV production of the plant on an energy basis. 6) Operate the plant, the employee housing, the stores and utilities supporting the employees, all from the 10 megawatt system. Don't forget to pay the employees in scrip redeemable in PV panels. 7) Produce PV panels until "breakeven", which would be something like 10 megawatts worth (item 1) plus a bunch more (items 3, 5 and 6). 8) (Maybe) produce a bunch more "net" panels until the plant wears out. Don't forget to subtract any panels made to replace "burnouts" in your 10 megawatt array and PV panel scrip redemptions by the employees (I'm guessing about one to three 100 watt panels per employee per week). 9) Divide the number of panels produced by the number of "breakeven" panels in item 7). If the number is say, 2.0 or more, you win. Less than 2.0, we all lose. This isn't really an unreasonable challenge, IF PV really has what it takes to replace some significant portion of the hydrocarbon energy demand. So, how about it? Solarex? Siemens? Koyocera? Solec? Anybody?
energy entropy + capitalist crisis
Entropy is of course a key concept in any meaningful discussion about energy. The argument that energy supply is 'infinite' derives from the neo-classical economics concept of substitutability. The argument does not of course (for obvious epistemological reasons) take account of the bounded nature of the planetary energy system or of the entropy involved in any use of energy. Whether or not sunshine is infinite, the earth is a closed entropic system. The solar fluxes it can capture (by photosynthesis or human photovoltaic technology, or wind (a climatic product of solar energy) or whatever other method) are therefore also limited. Thus it is intuitively obvious that energy supplies available to planetbound humans are by nature limited. There are industry suggestions of capturing helium from the gaseous clouds around Jupiter, and using this as the raw material of the future hydrogen economy. Such talk is suggestive of desperation more than anything else. The problem with substitutability is that it involves the same kind of leap of faith which Yoshie Furuhashi reminded us was the great French mathematician Pascal's definition of Christianity. You cannot argue with neoclassicals because their faith in markets is not susceptible to reason. As is clear from discussions on this List, some who might define themselves as Marxists also turn out when scratched to be made of different metal. It is argued that invoking energy as the prime mover of capitalist accumulation is actually a ricardian thing to do, or even Physiocratic. Malcolm Caldwell's highly original book 'Wealth of Some Nations' attracted this kind of criticism when first published in the early 70s. Caldwell argued that capitalism was coterminous with the era of fossil fuel use: it began when coal began to be used extensively in industry and transport, and will end when oil runs out. Malcolm (he was a friend of mine) paid with his life for his visionary ideas, the logic of which drove him to support the kind of sustainable communist utopia which he imagined Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were just then installing in Cambodia. Being himself a communist and a man of action, he went to Cambodia and was assassinated there on Christmas Day in (I think) 1975. I was influenced by his ideas then and am now: but I did not support his solidarity with the Khmer Rouge and urged him to abandon it (the last time we met and talked about this was in a pub outside Heathrow Airport, from where he was about to depart to Khampuchea; I never saw him again). But there is an awful warning about his fate, and I sympathise a little with the motivations of those who joke about me as a 'Jim Jones apocalypticist'. But they are wrong to identify me with a cause so abhorrent as Pol Pot's. Actually my position is exactly the opposite to Malcolm Caldwell's: I am saying that *if we want to avoid that kind of dreadful outcome, we need to not sleepwalk into another and this time final energy crisis*. We need to keep our utopian speculations alive, but place them in the context of a different world from the one which socialists hoped for: a world with a damaged ecosphere, and very little *usable* energy (orders of magnitude less than now). In such a world, capital, raw materials and energy will be relatively more valuable factors of production than they are now, and labour will be worth very much less. This is actually a recipe for a return to warlordism, for slavery and for grinding poverty, terrible barbarity and generalised brutality. But it need not be this way, and some societies, for example modern Cuba, show how it can be different. It is Cuba, not Cambodia, which must be our common future. Energy is a commodity like any other, and its value (and ultimately price) is determined by the socially-necessary abstract labour which it embodies. But energy is also a commodity unlike any other, since it is an input (like labour-power) into all other commodities, and since available energy is the key determinant of the rate of *relative* surplus-value. The rise in social productivity which is the technical, material correlative of the rate of s-v, can be expressed as *the more efficient use of energy in the transformation of objects into commodities*. And this applies to energy itself, the appropriation of which has always been subject to technical/material transformation and to increased efficiency and productivity (in material/technical terms, this is the process of 'decarbonisation' according to which energy-bases and industrial systems switch from more to less carbon intensive fuels: from coal, to oil, to gas, to hydrogen; each time an atom of carbon is dropped, capitalism has renewed itself on a new and radically more efficient energy base). This process by itself goes some way to explain the paradox that although energy is becoming relatively more scarce, its value and price continue to fall and will do so until a qualitative change sets in. At this point the world energy-system,
Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNational Emissions of] (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have found myself in agreement with Lou's recent post suggesting that the roots of ecological crisis and overpopulation pressures lie in the contradictions of capitalism, and that a socialist revolution is not only necessary but also desirable if we are to have a sustainable ecological system in the future. Hmm, ok, maybe I can get an answer from you: what changes in industrial and agricultural practices, energy sources, the built environment, living arrangements, etc., will occur under socialism that will avoid the eco-catastrophe capitalism supposedly has in store for us. It's not just a matter of invoking the words "socialist revolution" along the lines of "Presto Change-o," is it? Doug Well, they do have to be the opposite of the changes that took place under really existing socialism... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: My looniness
I don't understand. Is the YES meant to imply that electricity production depends ultimately upon fossil fuels? Unless you live in the Pacific Northwest or France, the bulk of your electricity comes from power plants that burn fossil fuels...
RE: On Mark to Rod, was Re: Re: re: energy
HE: . . . We intellectuals have to join the organizations of these committed workers and help them write a consistent programme how to avoid ecological catastrophe by a world wide proletarian revolution, and establish a minority dictatorship which will carry out this programme with Stalinist methods. You will be surprised how many liberals with support such a proletarian-based movement once it is big enough. . . . [mbs] When it's big enough, will we have a choice? HE: . . . Therefore my advice is: join any proletarian communist party, whether it be the Worker's World Party (my personal favorite at the moment), the CPUSA, the SWP, etc., whatever, . . . [mbs] WWP does great banners, but my favorite is the Naxalbari (CPI-M). They came into villages and cut off landlords heads. HE: . . . Or use your computer skills to write the software for a computer-based planned economy, . . . [mbs] I've already done this. Unfortunately we will have to limit ourselves to the production of nuts and apples. HE: . . Whatever you do, think big. Stop diddling around. Word. mbs
help! How do I unsubscribe?
Can anyone tell me how to unsubscribe? regards Turan Subasat
Re: Re: My looniness
Charles Brown wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/28/00 05:27PM And Rod also wrote: It's just that as a point of departure global warming will not work. ) CB: I don't think the facts of the recent history of party formation support you here, Carrol. The biggest new party in the world in the last 40 years is the Greens. We are a long way from Lady Bird's "Don't be a litterbug" campaign. Long range threats to the environment will, I admit, energize many people, but there seems to be at least two limits: (a) the issue itself reverberates at all for only a relatively small number of people and (b) within that constituency too many flake off in weird directions (witness Dennis Redmond on the Marxism list putting whales before Indian literation. My original point was that *within* larger movements otherwise generated concern for the environment and the long range health of humanity will further energize those movements, but that they will never emerge from a primray focus on the environment. I think the rest of your post supports my point. Another example, the one demonstration held in conjunction with the Detroit BRC meeting was to protest a polluted dump on Wabash street. A leader of Detroiters for Environmental Justice was a co-chair of the BRC host committee. Two big points here. First, the BRC did not arise from environmental concern but (and rightly so) has incorporated environmental concers into its program. The second point in a way is even bigger. The particular action you cite fits David Harvey's picture of environmental action, and David Harvey is categorized by Lou as a "Brown Marxist." I doubt that the protestors would have taken time out from more important business (political or personal) to leaflet on Wabash Ave. not about the local dump but on the dangers of Detroit drowning in Lake Erie 50 years from now. I think a lot more people than explicitly express it now, have by common sense in the back of their mind a concern that they can't just keep "partying" at this level without paying the piper eventually. I agree. That is why I believe environmental and energy concerns should figure prominently in any left program. But the program has to be founded on other concerns. It is like smoking cigarettes. If given a way and if everybody else starts stopping, they would like to stop. Tsk Tsk Charles. Do I perceive methodological individualism raising its sinister head. :-) Also, to me , the struggle against nuclear weapons is half an "environmental" struggle. Granted. That is abstractly true. But I am talking about the tasks of *building* a working-class movement. I argue that environment can be an important but still subordinate part of that movement. The movement against nuclear weapons did gather to it many people from many different walks of life and political perspectives -- but frankly I dout it would have come into existence to reach that movement were it not for the various CPs linked to the USSR. What I'm arguing for is more consideration of the way various issues and potential issues link to each other and world conditions now. I think that, temporarily at least, Mark and Lou are so focused on global warming and energy depletion that (even assuming them to be correct in that concern) they are losing their political senses. Lenin remarks on the common fact of petty-bourgeois youth driven to a frenzy by the horrors of imperialism. He should have said conscious people from all classes being so driven. I fear that Lou and Mark are similarly being driven to an (unthinking) frenzy by the environmental horrors they perceive. Carrol
Re: On Mark to Rod, was Re: Re: re: energy
Hans, do Hillier/Buttler have some secret parallel list where they hold the *real* discussion, as opposed to the vacuous imbecilism of their front-organisation, the marxist-leninist-take-me-for-an-idiot-list? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Hans Ehrbar" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 3:57 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20939] On Mark to Rod, was Re: Re: re: energy On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 18:10:45 -0500, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: So unless you really do agree with Hans Ehrbar on the need for an elitist putsch to stop global warming, you had better give some thought to how that mass support can be (beginning now) marshalled It is not my view that an elitist putsch can stop global warming. On the contrary, only those who experience the exploitation and oppression of capitalism by their own body and soul every day are able to put up the consistent fight against capitalism that is needed. An appeal to the intellect that the world is burning will not change the members of PEN-L or any other email list into the devoted, disciplined, selfless fighters which are able to overturn the system. Thinking that it can or that it ought to is idealism. Such fighters exist today, capitalism creates lots of them every day with its cruelty, but in the leading industrial countries they will always be in a minority. We intellectuals have to join the organizations of these committed workers and help them write a consistent programme how to avoid ecological catastrophe by a world wide proletarian revolution, and establish a minority dictatorship which will carry out this programme with Stalinist methods. You will be surprised how many liberals with support such a proletarian-based movement once it is big enough. Therefore my advice is: join any proletarian communist party, whether it be the Worker's World Party (my personal favorite at the moment), the CPUSA, the SWP, etc., whatever, and help them reach more workers or improve their theory. For those who cannot function in such an environment, an alternative might be to use your computer skills to build a new internet-based international which combines all these scattered proletarian organizations. Sven Buttler and Jim Hillier's marxist-leninist-list is working in this direction. Or use your computer skills to write the software for a computer-based planned economy, which could then perhaps be adopted by countries like Cuba, using Cockshott and Cottrell's "Towards a New Socialism" as the starting point. Whatever you do, think big. Stop diddling around. I am appending a message I sent to the bhaskar list on June 12 which explains more of the theory behind this. Hans Ehrbar. Sunday morning I sent the following message to Louis Proyect's marxism list and to leninist-international. I think it might also be of interest to the Bhaskar list, since it was inspired by RB in at least two respects: (1) Bhaskars criticism of Marx that he, following Hegel, put too much emphasis on internal, at the expense of external contradictions (the ecological limits of the earth are an external contradiction of capitalism, and Marx's dictum in the preface that "the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or are at least in the course of formation" is only valid for internal, not for external contradictions). (2) Bhaskar's repudiation of the fact-value distinction which encourages me to say here that only those who truly hate the capitalist system have a correct grasp of its reality. I have not yet received any responses for this posting on the other two lists. Something tells me that I might get a response on this list here. Capitalism makes profits by the exploitation of labor. Those who create all the surplus value, on which capital depends in order to function, see their lives reduced to drudgery, without enough time or money to care for their children, without access to proper medical care, see their neighborhoods blighted, their youth terrorized by police, denied their life chances and a decent education, driven into drugs. Every day they are reminded of the contempt the system has for their lives and everything that is dear to them. These people get to the point where every molecule in their body hates the system. They are also the ones that can overturn the system, because capital needs them, organizes them, teaches them hard work and discipline, and at the same time makes implacable enemies out of them. They are willing to face bullets and torture and their own deaths and continue fighting after 1000 defeats. This is what it takes to overturn the system. This is the vanguard which needs to organize itself world wide, even if they are a minority in countries like the
Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNationalEmissions of] (fwd)
M A Jones wrote: But capitalism will collapse anyway. Right. Where have I heard that one before? Doug
Re: re: energy (fwd)
o la la.. Jay Hanson's energy list serv? never been to, but it must be interesting. Jay is a phenomenal guy personality wise. Three basic ideas he subscribes to in every occasion I have been to: 1) genetic roots of authoritarianism 2)inherent destructiveness of human nature 3) inevitability of energy crisis. I *love* Hobbesians when they present themselves as Marxists... bye, Mine This kind of thing is debated on Jay Hanson's list, where ex-vice presidents of PV companies argue that PV's are the future and people answer them like this From: Mark Boberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Jun 28, 2000 11:02pm Subject: PV (was RE: Re: Lynch recap) --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Glenn Lieding [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Investing today's oil-energy in manufacturing, deploying, and maintaining PV, in order to realize an energy return on that investment in the future, makes sense if the average rate of energy made available by the PV, multiplied by the lifespan of the PV, exceeds the total energy invested. A real world test of PV viability would be for a PV manufacturer to commit to building and operating a PV production facility using only PV power to do it. Solarex (BPAmoco) has a plant with an impressive all-PV roof. I sent them an Email asking whether that plant was self sufficient. Their answer was: no, actually we are the second largest electricity consumer in the county. So, PV industry, if you're listening, here's the challenge: 1) Using your coolest, best, most efficient technology, build say 10 megawatts of PV panels. Acquire all the necessary mounts,trackers, inverters, wire, batteries, controllers, etc. We won't even count the energy required to make all this, its a freebie. 2) Find the best solar site in the World and set up your system there. 3) Locate, lease, and set up the equipment necessary to construct a PV plant from scratch. Select versions of all this stuff that will run on PV electrical power (invent new versions as required - an electric backhoe comes to mind). Use a PV powered truck, train, boat to bring the equipment and raw materials to the site. The lease cost of this stuff will be charged to the future PV production of the plant on an energy basis (ie equivalent PV panel lifetime energy production). 4) Saw the wood, smelt the steel, burn the limestone for the cement, crush the gravel, machine the bolts, dig the dirt,etc, etc, and erect the building, all using the PV from your 10 megawatt system. 5) Locate, lease, and set up the equipment necessary to produce PV panels complete (silicon production, wafer production, panel assembly, etc.) The lease cost for this stuff will also be charged to the future PV production of the plant on an energy basis. 6) Operate the plant, the employee housing, the stores and utilities supporting the employees, all from the 10 megawatt system. Don't forget to pay the employees in scrip redeemable in PV panels. 7) Produce PV panels until "breakeven", which would be something like 10 megawatts worth (item 1) plus a bunch more (items 3, 5 and 6). 8) (Maybe) produce a bunch more "net" panels until the plant wears out. Don't forget to subtract any panels made to replace "burnouts" in your 10 megawatt array and PV panel scrip redemptions by the employees (I'm guessing about one to three 100 watt panels per employee per week). 9) Divide the number of panels produced by the number of "breakeven" panels in item 7). If the number is say, 2.0 or more, you win. Less than 2.0, we all lose. This isn't really an unreasonable challenge, IF PV really has what it takes to replace some significant portion of the hydrocarbon energy demand. So, how about it? Solarex? Siemens? Koyocera? Solec? Anybody?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in theWorld-System and National Emissions of] (fwd)
Michael Perelman wrote: I just read that NY City is the largest consumer of pesticides in the state. Now that you have that part of the agricultural system, may the rest won't be too hard. Could you be a little less opaque? Do you mean that reducing pesticide use will require depopulating the cities? Where will everyone go? NYC also houses half the U.S. non-poverty households without cars. We use less energy here than practically any place in the USA. If you depopulate us, will we have to start driving? Or do I have to grow my own food and weave my own cloth? Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-Systemand National Emissions of] (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what are you trying to prove with your insults Doug? are you implying the impossibility of a socialist agenda? who is fantasizing here? Ok, so you don't have any idea what changes are necessary in the actual structures of production and consumption. All that's required is loyalty to Marx and a critical attitude. That's pretty much what I suspected, but it's good to see my suspicions confirmed. Oh, and solving the population problem? When people are happier they'll have fewer babies. Population growth is virtually 0 in Western Europe, but Western Europe is only a bit more ecologically sustainable than the U.S. But is a growth rate of 0 low enough? Could we feed and house 6 billion people if we all spent our time searching for "Jack-in-the-Pulpits or fishing for pickerel"? That kind of rural leisure is available to someone living in a rich country; in a poor country, you'd be more likely tilling the soil or grinding corn from dawn til dusk. These apocalpytic imaginings aren't serious politics, they're just lurid fantasies. Doug
Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNationalEmissions of] (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/28/00 05:59PM [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have found myself in agreement with Lou's recent post suggesting that the roots of ecological crisis and overpopulation pressures lie in the contradictions of capitalism, and that a socialist revolution is not only necessary but also desirable if we are to have a sustainable ecological system in the future. Hmm, ok, maybe I can get an answer from you: what changes in industrial and agricultural practices, energy sources, the build environment, living arrangements, etc., will occur under socialism that will avoid the eco-catastrophe capitalism supposedly has in store for us. It's not just a matter of invoking the words "socialist revolution" along the lines of "Presto Change-o," is it? _ CB: To purport to answer your question fully would be to assume the approach of a utopian. The answer to your question must come in the main from the practice, trial and error, of billions of people. Building an ecologically viable society cannot be done based on a detailed blueprint proposed by a few genius intellectuals anymore than building socialism. The Marxist approach to eco-relief is the same as its approach to exploitation-relief: Identify and highlight the basic crisis generating contradictions as a guide, not dogma, for practice. This is the opposite of a "presto chango" solution, for the actual solution "on the ground" will take difficult struggle based on some fundamental guiding principles, i.e. general eco-socialist consciousness in the masses of people on earth. It WONT be easy to answer your question in detail even in practice, and impossible to answer it theoretically in detail without practice as on an e-mail list. The ecological crisis is integral with and a concrete aspect of capitalist crisis. Capitalism in its imperialist stage has based itself critically on the use of oil. So, given that this means that there would have to be a super drastic drop in profiteering by the oil companies, auto companies and many other companies dependent upon oil directly and indirectly for production, these imperialists are inherently unable to even explore such a radical change. Ergo, the logic of capitalism as it is concretely constituted in 2000 can't do the job. It cannot possible actually seek the answers and actions in detail that you ask above ( and as I say, nor can a few genius intellectuals give you the details in advance of practice by the billions). But, one thing we can say as a general guide ( not the detailed blueprint) is that Year 2000 capitalist accumulation as the arch-controlling logic of the whole of human society must be obliterated to free up the practice of the billions to find the detailed answers to the questions you ask.
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNationalEmissions of] (fwd)
Doug Henwood wrote: M A Jones wrote: But capitalism will collapse anyway. Right. Where have I heard that one before? Actually the prediction was made by many old guys millenia ago before capitalism was ever heard of. You know, the old stuff about the rise and fall of this or that. ONe doesn't have to be even remotely a marxist to know this. Now *dating* it -- that's something else. And of course it is also another quesion whether the collapse will be followed by socialism or barbarianism. But who can seriously object to the abstract proposition that "Capitalism will collapse." It seems a rather trivial tautology. Carrol
Krugman Watch: Japan (again)
June 28, 2000 / New York TIMES RECKONINGS/ By PAUL KRUGMAN Japan's Memento Mori ... Whenever I write about Japan, I get quizzical letters from Americans who don't see why they should care. The world's second-largest economy is neither doing well enough to provide villains for a Michael Crichton novel nor badly enough to pose any clear and present danger to prosperity elsewhere. So why should anyone without a direct financial stake be interested in its troubles? The answer -- the reason professional macroeconomists are grimly fascinated by Japan's economic malaise, and you should at least be interested -- is that Japan's sad tale is a reminder that the roots of prosperity may be shallower than we like to think. It's not just the historical parallels, though Japan in the late 80's shared many of the features of America in the early 00's: high growth without inflation, technological dynamism, extremely high stock valuations that analysts somehow managed to rationalize. What is really unsettling about Japan is not so much the fact that it went wrong but the way it went wrong. If you had polled serious economists a decade ago, and asked whether it was possible for a modern economy to experience a decade of "demand-side" stagnation -- productive capacity going unused because consumers and businesses could not be persuaded to spend enough -- I am sure that 99 percent of them would have answered "no." We had learned the lessons of the Great Depression; never again would the leaders of a major economy make the mistakes that allowed that slump to go on so long. Even now a fair number of my colleagues seem to think that a slump that cannot be cured with a sufficiently low interest rate is theoretically impossible. Yet that's the reality in Japan, and if it can happen there, why not here? It's interesting that "a fair number" of the elite of the economics profession see the possibility of a Great Depression-type slump or stagnation in the US. However, have "we" really "learned the lessons of the Great Depression"? A surprisingly large number of elite economists -- including PK sometimes -- seem to think that saving promotes real investment, a naive return to pre-Keynesian economics (called Say's "Law"). That suggests that the lessons haven't been learned. (A few years ago PK favored a "modern" version of Say's Law that saving encourages investment. He assumed that the Federal Reserve could determine the level of output, attaining the level of real GDP corresponding to the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, the NAIRU. With given real GDP, a rise in saving indeed leads to a rise in investment. But not only is the NAIRU totally unknown if not non-existent, but the Fed doesn't even try to set the level of output. Instead, it fixes interest rates such as the Fed Funds rate in hopes of preventing inflation. I believe that PK has repudiated his modern Say's Law.) Admittedly, Japan does not look like a nation in the midst of depression, mainly because we have learned something these past 70 years: instead of trying to balance its budget in the face of a slump, the L.D.P. [Liberal Democratic Party] has engaged in huge "pump-priming" deficit spending. Or maybe that's a bad metaphor. Japan's fiscal efforts don't call to mind a farmer getting his pump running so much as sailors frantically bailing out a leaky boat. So far they have succeeded in keeping the boat from sinking, giving themselves time -- but time to do what? Neither the L.D.P. nor the opposition seems to have any idea. I think that there's been a failure of the imagination here, a failure arising because there's not enough pressure on Japan's elite to break with old ways of dealing with the problem. Awhile back, I suggested an idea to PK that he seems to have ignored (as has the Japanese elite). Why couldn't Japan do what the US did in a big way during the 1950s and 1960s, i.e., give "tied" foreign aid. Thus, they could give GigaYen to the poor folks in, say, East St. Louis (Illinois), in a way that could only be spent on buying Japanese goods and transported using Japanese ships, etc. Not only does this stimulate economy of Japan, but it prevents the overbuilding of infrastructure, something which seems to have happened. It would also make Japan look like a philanthropist on a world scale, a global Bill Gates. Then they could spend some of their moral capital they've earned by selling arms to other countries (and by stirring up wars) ... Of course, all or most of this might be unpopular with the US Treasury Secretary, who seems to have a lot of input in deciding their policy. Of course, there may also be infrastructure that needs to be built but isn't because of domestic or foreign political opposition. Branching out beyond the usual infrastructure, there may be some education or basic-research investment that could be done. I don't know anything about this in the case
Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and NationalEmissions of] (fwd)
Charles Brown wrote: To purport to answer your question fully would be to assume the approach of a utopian. The answer to your question must come in the main from the practice, trial and error, of billions of people. This is evasive. I'm not asking for a 24-volume detailed blueprint - I'm asking for general principles of organization, and specifically those that are technically feasible but politically impossible under capitalism. If red-greens can't do this, they will convince no one of anything except their millennarian fervor. Doug
Re: Asperger's Syndrome
By mistake, I've been sending pen-l my wrong web-page address, the one that refers to the support group for parents of kids with Asperger's Syndrome (mild autism) that my wife and I run. However, if you're interested, click away. (Hey, it's my life away from pen-l!) Instead, the article reflects the biases of the psychology profession. The fascination with the high IQs of many of those with AS is probably the magazine's most blatant sign of ideology... Jim Devine -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lest this list remain guilty of flatness of affect, how is your kid doing? (If, that is, you feel like this particular mode of social interaction; not to pressure you or put you on the spot or anything--just concern and curiosity...) Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNationalEmissions of] (fwd)
Doug Henwood wrote: Charles Brown wrote: To purport to answer your question fully would be to assume the approach of a utopian. The answer to your question must come in the main from the practice, trial and error, of billions of people. This is evasive. I'm not asking for a 24-volume detailed blueprint - I'm asking for general principles of organization, and specifically those that are technically feasible but politically impossible under capitalism. If red-greens can't do this, they will convince no one of anything except their millennarian fervor. Bullshit Doug. On the contrary, any statement of the kind you want would be arrogant and stupid, not merely utopian. No one except a few academics and journalists (I ignore sheer demogogues) has ever taken up resistance to capitalism on the basis of being convinced there is a "better system." And frankly I doubt the good faith of anyone who asks such questions. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in theWorld-System andNationalEmissions of] (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/00 01:18PM Doug Henwood wrote: M A Jones wrote: But capitalism will collapse anyway. Right. Where have I heard that one before? Actually the prediction was made by many old guys millenia ago before capitalism was ever heard of. You know, the old stuff about the rise and fall of this or that. ONe doesn't have to be even remotely a marxist to know this. Now *dating* it -- that's something else. And of course it is also another quesion whether the collapse will be followed by socialism or barbarianism. But who can seriously object to the abstract proposition that "Capitalism will collapse." It seems a rather trivial tautology. _ CB: Yea, I mean isn't the alternative idea that capitalism is eternal ? Like God . It is a dialectical truth that capitalism will end. I don't know about a tautology. A tautology is a formal logical truth , A is A, the law of non-contradiction. The truth that capitalism will collapse is based on contradiction, not non-contradiction. And I'm not sure it is trivial either. Rather important , actually, especially since the ruling ideas of our age are that capitalism is an eternal, natural human condition.
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNationalEmissions of] (fwd)
Carrol Cox wrote: Bullshit Doug. On the contrary, any statement of the kind you want would be arrogant and stupid, not merely utopian. No one except a few academics and journalists (I ignore sheer demogogues) has ever taken up resistance to capitalism on the basis of being convinced there is a "better system." Hmm, I can see it now, "Risk your livelihood, even your life, for an ineffable future!" Why would anyone take up resistance without even a hint of what they were fighting for? And frankly I doubt the good faith of anyone who asks such questions. This has all been very clarifying. Why am I reminded of that old joke about Rebels without a clue? Doug
Partial Retraction + Expansion was ... World-System ...
Carrol Cox wrote: And frankly I doubt the good faith of anyone who asks such questions. You piss me off but I retract that charge. But I want to push the issue a little further. Over the years I have in fact moved a number of people to become communist activists, and I have persuaded quite a few people to give more trust to communists than non-communists without becoming communists themselves. And I have *never* once, even tentatively, given any assurance that socialism would actually work. Neither have I ever adopted a "sceptical" perspective -- I have been quite dogmatic in fact in insisting that we can't know whether socialism will work or not and we can't know whether we can even establish it or not. I have simply argued in innumerable ways, *always* taking off from the activist experience of those I was talking to, that we had to resist capitalism, and that the overthrow of capitalism would provide a new field of struggle. In fact the only thing that I have ever been really dogmatic about is this point. I have always encased my recruiting efforts beween two slogans as it were: Barbarianism or socialism (and maybe barbarianism in any case) What is? Struggle. (That represents close to my entire ontology.) And as a result I have always been able to give the same reply to all complaints about this or that error, defeat, crime of this or that socialist movement (in power or not): "It's a struggle." And people do accept this if you haven't begun your relationship with them by spinning a lot of bullshit about the certain glories of socialism or given this that recipe for the cookshops of the future. Please note a key phrase above, "the activist experience of those I was talking to." I simply don't talk serious politics to those who are not already engaged in struggle of some sort -- some struggle which in some way or other I am engaged in with them. And this is why the experience of academics or journalists -- even very good and very committed activists and journalists -- is not only irrelevant but to some extent incompatible with the political agitation and organization. (And this is why, also, I never for a moment fooled myself into thinking that my teaching was or even could be political in any meaningful sense.) The journalist or academic has an essentially passive audience, and has no real relationship to that audience except through the words/ideas he/she can put forth. That can be useful -- but it simply cannot be a model for political work. And in your continual demands for scenarios (for revolution) or some picture or other of socialism you speak as a journalist and/or academic. And I believe you said as much yourself in a post the other day. I believe journalists and academics can be comrades -- but they have to learn from history the limits of the academic or journalistic perspective. Carrol
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28, 2000 RELEASED TODAY: In May, 222 metropolitan areas reported unemployment rates below the U.S. average (3.9 percent, not seasonally adjusted), while 102 areas registered higher rates. Twenty-nine metropolitan areas had rates below 2.0 percent, with 12 of these located in the Midwest, 9 in the South, and 5 in New England. Of the eight areas with jobless rates over 10.0 percent, six were in California, and two were along the Mexican border in other states. ... A new study by three respected economists is fueling debate inside the Federal Reserve while bringing to a head an academic argument that has been brewing for 5 years. The subject: How low can unemployment go without triggering inflation? ... In a soon-to-be-released paper, three scholars conclude that the jobless rate could long remain as low as 4.5 percent without a surge in prices. That is higher than the current rate of 4.1 percent, but well below the consensus of mainstream analysts, most of whom believe that unemployment can't stay below about 5 percent for long without igniting inflation. The paper was written by George Akerlof, economist at the University of California-Berkeley; George Perry, senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisors during the Kennedy administration who is now at the Bookings Institution; and William Dickens, former member of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton, now also at Brookings. The economists believe a long-term jobless rate of 4.5 percent would push inflation somewhat above its current rock-bottom levels with consumer prices rising at about 3.4 percent a year, compared with the 3.1 percent annual rate recorded so far this year. But they say that prices would then stabilize at that level and wouldn't accelerate, as other economist fear. In fact, they argue that a moderate level of price increases -- not zero inflation -- is the ideal because it allows the maximum number of Americans to hold jobs without threatening the economy. ... (Yochi J. Dreazen in Wall Street Journal, page A2). The consumer confidence index declined 5.9 percentage points from 144.7 percent in May to 138.8 percent in June. This was attributed mainly to a drop in the expectations for business conditions 6 months ahead, although the present-situation measure also turned down. Taken in the context of other economic reports showing somewhat slower growth, this latest report "points toward a bit of a cooling," the director of the Conference Board's consumer research center told the Bureau of National Affairs. But the size of the decline does not suggest a sharp turnaround in consumer spending, the director said. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-10)_Consumer confidence fell in June, reflecting concern with the direction of the economy in the face of rising interest rates and soaring gasoline prices. The June reading remains near record levels and is not seen as a sign of an end of economic growth. But consumers did begin to indicate that they were less optimistic about future economic conditions (Washington Post, page E11)_Consumer confidence fell in June from a record high a month earlier, dampened by higher gasoline prices and the Federal Reserve's effort to slow the economy. ... (New York Times, page C10)_Consumers are feeling somewhat less secure about the economy. As the Federal Open Market Committee enters its second day of meetings, its members should welcome a sign of waning consumer optimism. More Americans expect the number of jobs will shrink over the next 6 months, and fewer said they planned to buy new cars or homes than in May. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2). Internal Revenue Service data shows just how far prosperity has spread across America, with stock options, two-career couples, and capital gains helping to lift a record number of families to six-figure annual incomes. One taxpayer in 15 resided in this economic realm in 1998, Treasury reported -- an increase of 1.1 million over 1997. The number of taxpayers (IRS counts a married couple who file jointly as one taxpayer) with incomes of $100,000 or more soared in 1998 to 8.3 million, up 15 percent from 7.2 million in 1997, preliminary figures from 1998 income tax returns showed. ... Analysis of the IRS data also showed that the share of the economic pie going to those making $100,000 or more expanded to 36.9 percent in 1998, from 34.2 percent in 1997. ... (New York Times, page C1), Competing for the smallest pool of college graduates of accounting programs in more than a decade, many of the nation's largest accounting firms and associations have begun grooming talent at secondary schools, the latest battlefield in an industrywide recruitment war. With scholarships and internships in hand, they are hoping to resuscitate a field that is rapidly losing conscripts to the wonders of technology and the glamour of being an entrepreneur. A 23-percent drop in enrollment in
query
does anyone know the specifics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI-U-X1 consumer price index? why is it preferred by mainstream macro-econometricians? thanks ahead of time. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
[Fwd: Position in the World-System and NationalEmissions of](fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/00 01:44PM Charles Brown wrote: To purport to answer your question fully would be to assume the approach of a utopian. The answer to your question must come in the main from the practice, trial and error, of billions of people. This is evasive. I'm not asking for a 24-volume detailed blueprint - I'm asking for general principles of organization, _ CB: And of course there is a big element of the "idiot questioner" in your question. You already know the major elements of the socialist proposal for the transformation of society. You are also not acknowledging that one major general principle of organization that I gave you is the same as the old one: abolition of private property, because profiteering is an absolute barrier to any major diminution in oil usage because oil is such a critical resource in concrete capitalism 2000. As far as, GENERAL principles of organization specifically related to ecological problems, Louis Proyect and Mark Jones, et al., have given you them in spades over the course of many years. 95% plus of the history of humanity has demonstrated that humans can survive with a drastically different technical base than that of today in the West. And it has by no means been proven that people are happier today than through out most of that time period. __-- and specifically those that are technically feasible but politically impossible under capitalism. CB: The general principles of organization that are technically feasible but politically impossible under capitalism: We don't have an alternative to oil and fossil fuels right now ( and I don't have some genius natural science discovery ). So, as a general matter I would start with fulfillment of the physiological necessities. Food, shelter , etc. for 6 billion people. Perhaps as a ROUGH estimate for a first step, the whole world should become one giant Cuba in terms of its average individual material kit. Oil usage should be drastically confined to basic sufficient food , medicine and shelter production Totally elimination of all production and existing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and 95% of all the rest of military production (impossible without the abolition of capitalism). Howabout a new general custom that almost everybody goes to sleep when it is dark, so that electric light usage is drastically reduced How about a moratorium on 95% of television for some number of years ? Moratorium on the production of jetskis for some number of years., living arrangements more like those from the first thousands of years of humanity etc, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. With sufficient consciousness in the billions, all of this would not have to reduce the average quality of life. It is possible to be genuinely happy with much simpler kit of pleasures leisures and productive activities if one is raised differently than the average Westerner. __ If red-greens can't do this, they will convince no one of anything except their millennarian fervor. __ CB: They've already done it, as far as GENERAL principles. The general principles are the reversal of the critical problems that have been repeated 10,000 times, hundreds of times on these lists , alone. These are the guides to the search for the more specific and technical answers, which people really do have the creativity to find, if they divest of commodity fetishism. If you took up the red-green assumptions, rather than taking up a permanent posture of skepticism, you could convincingly answer your own question as far as GENERAL principles.
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in theWorld-System andNationalEmissions of] (fwd)
At 1:47 AM +0800 30/6/00, Carrol Cox wrote: Doug Henwood wrote: Charles Brown wrote: To purport to answer your question fully would be to assume the approach of a utopian. The answer to your question must come in the main from the practice, trial and error, of billions of people. This is evasive. I'm not asking for a 24-volume detailed blueprint - I'm asking for general principles of organization, and specifically those that are technically feasible but politically impossible under capitalism. If red-greens can't do this, they will convince no one of anything except their millennarian fervor. Bullshit Doug. On the contrary, any statement of the kind you want would be arrogant and stupid, not merely utopian. No one except a few academics and journalists (I ignore sheer demogogues) has ever taken up resistance to capitalism on the basis of being convinced there is a "better system." Perhaps no one except a few academics and journalists has taken up resistance on the basis of being convinced there is a better system, but many have _not_ taken up systemic resistance because they _don't_ believe there is a better system. But as a matter of fact, the bullshit is Cox's if he seriously truly that the revolutions were not made by people who all believed that there was a better system which they were ushering in. Why do you think there is so much insistence on TINA? And frankly I doubt the good faith of anyone who asks such questions. And many others will doubt the good faith of anyone who refuses to answer such questions in outline, especially since the collapse of ten years ago. A 100-years ago, it was still possible to leave it vague; even 50 years, or 30 years, ago. No more; not today. Sorry if this comes across as offensive, but one has to live in a cocoon world not to recognise that the massive defeat of 10 years ago, and the u-turn of Deng 20 years ago, hasn't had the massive effect of eroding belief in an alternative system and consequently resistance with a view to an alternative system, and not just against specific onerous and oppressive features of the existing. And within the former Soviet Union, ten years of declining life expectancy, of severe economic hardships and a contraction worse than that of the great depression, even of the Asian financial crisis, of a mafia economy, etc. has not generated any serious organised resistance. Does anyone seriously believe this has nothing to do with loss of faith in a "better system"? KJ Khoo
Re: query
Jim: The BLS replaced the CPI-U with the CPI-X1 in 1983 because the CPI-I included appreciation of the asset value of a home and therefore confused the investment and consumption dimensions of homeownership. The CPI-X1 tends to show a lower rate of inflation. Joel Blau Jim Devine wrote: does anyone know the specifics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI-U-X1 consumer price index? why is it preferred by mainstream macro-econometricians? thanks ahead of time. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: query
Jim Devine wrote: does anyone know the specifics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI-U-X1 consumer price index? why is it preferred by mainstream macro-econometricians? It's an experimental revision of the old CPI numbers in accordance with the change in how housing costs were accounted for starting in 1983. It lowered reported inflation (which has the benefit of raising real incomes and, if it were applied to the poverty line, would lower the poverty rate). The latest back-projected CPI is the CPI-U-RS, which revises all the old numbers to account for all the wondrous changes in the CPI over the last couple of years. Details at http://www.bls.gov/pdf/cpirsqa.pdf. The Census Bureau has a statement on using both in the latest income report http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/p60-206.pdf. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNational Emissions of] (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what are you trying to prove with your insults Doug? are you implying the impossibility of a socialist agenda? who is fantasizing here? Ok, so you don't have any idea what changes are necessary in the actual structures of production and consumption. All that's required is loyalty to Marx and a critical attitude. That's pretty much what I suspected, but it's good to see my suspicions confirmed. this is complete BS. We discussed what changes were necessary in the "actual structures of production" if you had paid enough attention to the subject matter of the posts instead of insulting people. One of them being, as it was mentioned, is the abolution of the distinction between town and country side. This distinction exists in every advacned capitalist country and it has been taking place in every developing country that is in the process of capitalist modernization.On the one hand, we have uneven urbanization and industrilization in the cities, on the other, we have commercialized agriculture in the country side: two forms of inequalities and class conflicts existing side by side and refinforcing each other. why to abolish this distinction as a sociialist agenda (since there is a rationale for it) 1) first, as MArx said in primitive accumulation chapter of Capital that capitalism first started in the country side, tranforming the property relations and generating the surplus necessary to build capitalism in the cities, so country had to be modernized first with new instruments and techniques of production. 2) although this transformation was progressive, it also impoverished the agricultural folk., either by forcing them to work under new capitalist landlords or forcing them to migrate to cities as wage laborers. If you also look at the actually existing socialisms, Doug, you will see an attempt to abolish this country/city duality towards a more equitable redistribution of wealth, so we are not talking about fantasy here or something which did not exist.. Land reforms in Russia, China, Cuba all attemped to achieve abolition of property in land; since traditional agricultural economy was also largely untransformed in those countries due to historical reasons, land reforms played an important role in applying rents of land to public purposes through a progressive income tax (which Marx talks in the Manifesto) and "abolution of right of inheritance". I am not saying land reforms were compeletely sucessfull; I am saying they were historically progessive compared to previous times (capitalism). For example, in Russia, between 1917-1921, various decrees were implemented by the soviet government to abolish the special priviliges of aristocrats, tsarist officials and capitalists (at a time when there were still monarchies in Europe). in 1929, the revolutionary cadre accomplished the elimination of estates of nobles (structurally) and their various "honorofic and political priviliges and their landed properties.the class of capitalists too with its private ownership and control of various industrial and commercial enterprises met its demise in this periodduring the 1920s, Red army and party leaders were heavily recruited from industial workers and peasent background" (Skocpol, p. 227) Socialism should be judged vis a vis historical circumstances by means of assesing the resources available to actors. We should learn from history and the experiences of actually existing socialisms.I know this is of zero interest to you Doug. Regarding population-- the part of your post which does not directly concern me, but i will answer. 0 population rate in Europe has nothing to do with the sustainability of environment there. Over-population pressures are created by capitalism, not by people, among the several reasons being HISTORY OF COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM, POVERTY, PLUNDERING OF NON-WHITES AND THEIR RESOURCES, DECLINING LIVING STANDARTS IN THE THIRD WORLD, GLOBAL INEQUALITIES, INCREASING ECONOMIC INSECURITY. IN THOSE COUNTRIES FACING EXTEREME POVERTY, CHILDREN ARE SEEN AS AN ASSET-- A SOURCE OF INCOME AND CHEAP LABOR. THINK ABOUT CHILD SLAVERY, THINK ABOUT CHILD SEX.. Another point worth mentioning: strawman of over-population is one's of the ways of obscuring capitalism's inequalities and racism.. I am working in an underclass black neigh, and I generally walk there. The people are structurally marginalized in that area of Albany, living below the poverty line. They are isolated into a small area; living as a big family, children playing outside etc.. so what happens is that they seem to be over-populated: small houses not having enough capacity to carry people and unevenly built to marginalize african american people there!! This is racism, dude racism! okey, my blood pressure is gradually increasing. have a suny day on wall street! Mine Oh, and solving the population problem? When people are happier they'll have fewer babies. Population growth is virtually 0 in Western
Re: Position within the World System (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what are you trying to prove with your insults Doug? are you implying the impossibility of a socialist agenda? who is fantasizing here? Ok, so you don't have any idea what changes are necessary in the actual structures of production and consumption. All that's required is loyalty to Marx and a critical attitude. That's pretty much what I suspected, but it's good to see my suspicions confirmed. BS. We discussed what changes were necesary in the "actual structures of production", if you had paid enough attention to the subject matter of the posts insteaed of insulting people. One of them being, as it was mentioned, is the abolution of the distinction between town and country side. This distinction exists in every advanced capitalist country, and it has been taking place in every developing country that is in the process of capitalist modernization.On the one hand we have uneven urbanization and industrilization in the cities, on the other we have commercialized forms of agriculture in the country side: two forms of inequalities and class conflicts existing side by side and refinforcing each other. why to abolish this distinction as part of the agenda (since there is a rationale for it) 1) first as MArx said in primitive accumulation chapter of Capital that capitalism first started in the country side, tranforming the property relations and generating the surplus necessary to build capitalism in the cities, so country had to be modernized first with new instruments and techniques of production. 2) although this transformation was progressive, it also impoverished the agricultural folk, either by forcing them to work under new capitalist landlords or forcing them to migrate to cities as wage laborers. If you also look at the actually existing socialisms, Doug, you will see an attempt to abolish this country/city duality towards a more equitable redistribution of wealth.If you also look at the actually existing socialisms, you will see an attempt to abolish this country/city duality towards a more equitable redistribution of wealth. Land reforms in Russia, China, Cuba all attemped to achieve abolition of property in land. Since traditional agricultural economy was also largely untransformed in those countries due to historical reasons, land reforms played an important role in applying rents of land to public purposes through a progressive income tax (which Marx talks in the Manifesto) and "abolution of right of inheritance". I am not saying land reforms were compeletely sucessfull; I am saying they were historically progessive compared to previous times (capitalism). For example, in Russia, between 1917-1921, various decrees were implemented by the soviet government to abolish the specaial priviliges of aristocrats, tsarist officials and capitalists ( at a time when there were still monarchies in Europe). in 1929, the revolutionary cadre accomplished the elimination of estates of nobles (structurally) and their various "honorofic and political priviliges and their landed properties.the class of capitalists too with its private ownership and control of various industrial and commercial enterprises met its demise in this period" (SKOCPOL, _States and Revolutions_, P.227). Socialism should be judged vis a vis historical circumstances by means of assesing the resources available to actors. We should learn from history and the experiences of actually existing socialisms.I know this is of zero interest to you, Doug. Regarding population-- the part of your post which does not direclty concern me-- but I will answer. 0 population rate in Europe nothing to do with the sustainability of environment there. Over-population pressures are created by capitalism, not by people, among the several reasons being HISTORY OF COLONIALISM, POVERTY, PLUNDERING OF NON-WHITES AND THEIR RESOURCES, DECLINING LIVING STANDARTS IN THE THIRD WORLD, GLOBAL INEQUALITIES, INCREASING ECONOMIC INSECURITY. IN THOSE COUNTRIES FACING EXTEREME POVERTY, CHILDREN ARE SEEN AS AN ASSET-- A SOURCE OF INCOME AND CHEAP LABOR. THINK ABOUT CHILD SLAVERY, THINK ABOUT CHILD SEX.. Another point worth mentioning: Strawman of over-population is one's of the ways of obscuring capitalism's inequalities and racism.. I am working in an underclass black neigh, and I generally walk there. Black people are structurally marginalized in that area of Albany, living below the poverty line. They are isolated into a small area; children playing outside etc.. so what happens is that they seem to be over-populated-- small houses not having enough capacity to carry people and unevenly built to marginalize african american people. This is racism, DUDE racism! okey, my blood pressure is gradually increasing. I wish you a suny day on Wall Street! Mine Oh, and solving the population problem? When people are happier they'll have fewer babies. Population growth is virtually 0 in Western Europe, but Western Europe is only a bit more ecologically
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in theWorld-System and National Emissions of] (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: what are you trying to prove with your insults Doug? are you implying the impossibility of a socialist agenda? who is fantasizing here? Ok, so you don't have any idea what changes are necessary in the actual structures of production and consumption. All that's required is loyalty to Marx and a critical attitude. That's pretty much what I suspected, but it's good to see my suspicions confirmed. this is complete BS. We discussed what changes were necessary in the "actual structures of production" if you had paid enough attention to the subject matter of the posts instead of insulting people. One of them being, as it was mentioned, is the abolution of the distinction between town and country side. You're just phrasemongering here. What does that really mean? We empty the cities and move people onto farms? Or will there be proletarian suburbs for all? How much mobility will you allow people? Will there be a division of labor, or do we all till and weave? Socialism should be judged vis a vis historical circumstances by means of assesing the resources available to actors. We should learn from history and the experiences of actually existing socialisms.I know this is of zero interest to you Doug. It's of much greater than zero interest. The history of actually existing socialism was hardly an inspiration to greens. Regarding population-- the part of your post which does not directly concern me, but i will answer. 0 population rate in Europe has nothing to do with the sustainability of environment there. What I said: "When people are happier they'll have fewer babies. Population growth is virtually 0 in Western Europe, but Western Europe is only a bit more ecologically sustainable than the U.S. But is a growth rate of 0 low enough?" Over-population pressures are created by capitalism, not by people, among the several reasons being HISTORY OF COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM, POVERTY, PLUNDERING OF NON-WHITES AND THEIR RESOURCES, DECLINING LIVING STANDARTS IN THE THIRD WORLD, GLOBAL INEQUALITIES, INCREASING ECONOMIC INSECURITY. IN THOSE COUNTRIES FACING EXTEREME POVERTY, CHILDREN ARE SEEN AS AN ASSET-- A SOURCE OF INCOME AND CHEAP LABOR. THINK ABOUT CHILD SLAVERY, THINK ABOUT CHILD SEX.. Gosh, I didn't know all these things. I'm learning so much from PEN-L these days. okey, my blood pressure is gradually increasing. have a suny day on wall street! Thanks. I'm about to head there to do my radio show in fact. Doug
Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
Eliminating the distinction between town and country side is a very abstract though admirable goal. But what does it mean concretely. Better planning of new housing space? More green space in the city? Better and more efficient transportation systems? Or is there something more drastic in mind? Dwelling solely in the world of the abstract is dangerous. Soon all that remains is the eternal dance of the categories or meaningless slogans. Rod -- 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: On Mark to Rod, was Re: Re: re: energy
Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Ph: (253) 692-4462 Comparative International Development Fax: (253) 692-5718 University of WashingtonBox Number: 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA xxx On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Max Sawicky wrote: Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 11:51:23 -0400 From: Max Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:20946] RE: On Mark to Rod, was Re: Re: re: energy HE: . . . We intellectuals have to join the organizations of these committed workers and help them write a consistent programme how to avoid ecological catastrophe by a world wide proletarian revolution, and establish a minority dictatorship which will carry out this programme with Stalinist methods. You will be surprised how many liberals with support such a proletarian-based movement once it is big enough. . . . [mbs] When it's big enough, will we have a choice? HE: . . . Therefore my advice is: join any proletarian communist party, whether it be the Worker's World Party (my personal favorite at the moment), the CPUSA, the SWP, etc., whatever, . . . [mbs] WWP does great banners, but my favorite is the Naxalbari (CPI-M). They came into villages and cut off landlords heads. It is not CPI-M, it is CPI-ML (marxists leninists). CPI-M is the ruling party of the state of West Bengal, now for two decades. Naxalbari, a village in north Bengal is the site of adhibasis (ancient peoples) or tribals. It is not surprising, given the massive exploitation that took place, that tools for cultivation would be used for annhilating the class enemy. HE: . . . Or use your computer skills to write the software for a computer-based planned economy, . . . [mbs] I've already done this. Unfortunately we will have to limit ourselves to the production of nuts and apples. HE: . . Whatever you do, think big. Stop diddling around. Word. mbs
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNationalEmissions of] (fwd)
Well, Carroll, I certainly like to see you raise the level of discourse. So it's arrogant and stupid and in bad faith of Doug to ask for a reason to think that we could do better if we made some sort of change in a direction you would consider socialist. well, sign me up to the arrogant, stupid, and bad faith list. Of course one will be convinced to join up on the basis of such ana rgument, but if we don't have it, we are losers in the ideological war. In case you didn't notice, the last 200 or so times we tried going at the thing blind we fucked up. The working class has certainly noticed that little fact. I think it is attitudes like yours that have helped to stick us in this ghetto who all we can do is snarl at each other. --jks Bullshit Doug. On the contrary, any statement of the kind you want would be arrogant and stupid, not merely utopian. No one except a few academics and journalists (I ignore sheer demogogues) has ever taken up resistance to capitalism on the basis of being convinced there is a "better system." And frankly I doubt the good faith of anyone who asks such questions. Carrol
My looniness
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/00 12:01PM Charles Brown wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/28/00 05:27PM And Rod also wrote: It's just that as a point of departure global warming will not work. ) CB: I don't think the facts of the recent history of party formation support you here, Carrol. The biggest new party in the world in the last 40 years is the Greens. We are a long way from Lady Bird's "Don't be a litterbug" campaign. Long range threats to the environment will, I admit, energize many people, but there seems to be at least two limits: (a) the issue itself reverberates at all for only a relatively small number of people and (b) within that constituency too many flake off in weird directions (witness Dennis Redmond on the Marxism list putting whales before Indian literation. My original point was that *within* larger movements otherwise generated concern for the environment and the long range health of humanity will further energize those movements, but that they will never emerge from a primray focus on the environment. I think the rest of your post supports my point. )) CB: Maybe I am jumping into the middle after my several days away, but one thought that occurs to me is that there seem to be a few symptoms of global warming observable now, like El Nino and warmer average temperatures. I agree that the enviromental problem generated concerns have to operate in the larger mix of activism. Green without red is a poor way to go at it. But I don't see Lou and Mark approaching it that way. Another example, the one demonstration held in conjunction with the Detroit BRC meeting was to protest a polluted dump on Wabash street. A leader of Detroiters for Environmental Justice was a co-chair of the BRC host committee. Two big points here. First, the BRC did not arise from environmental concern but (and rightly so) has incorporated environmental concers into its program. __ CB: But Detroiters for Environmental Justice, which is carrying out more actions in Detroit than the BRC, did. _ The second point in a way is even bigger. The particular action you cite fits David Harvey's picture of environmental action, and David Harvey is categorized by Lou as a "Brown Marxist." I doubt that the protestors would have taken time out from more important business (political or personal) to leaflet on Wabash Ave. not about the local dump but on the dangers of Detroit drowning in Lake Erie 50 years from now. ___ CB: If you care to, give me a little more on what you mean about this action fitting Harvey's Brown Marxist. I'm thinking "Brown Marxist" ( besides me, Marxist Brown) is someone who appeals to immediate self-interest of those propagandized ? The other thing is , isn't there an uncertain time frame for some of these catastrophes ? Also, doesn't the recent history of socialism vs capitalism, put Marxists into a mixed short term/long term analysis as basis for propaganda ? I think a lot more people than explicitly express it now, have by common sense in the back of their mind a concern that they can't just keep "partying" at this level without paying the piper eventually. I agree. That is why I believe environmental and energy concerns should figure prominently in any left program. But the program has to be founded on other concerns. _ CB: Yea, and especially because the only way to get at the environmental concerns is through anti-capitalist revolution. No green without red. It is like smoking cigarettes. If given a way and if everybody else starts stopping, they would like to stop. Tsk Tsk Charles. Do I perceive methodological individualism raising its sinister head. :-) ___ CB: Don't quite follow. There is no collective consciousness except in as it exists in individuals. Plus, above links the individual change to "everybody" changing, a social approach to the individual, the individual as a social being. Also, to me , the struggle against nuclear weapons is half an "environmental" struggle. Granted. That is abstractly true. But I am talking about the tasks of *building* a working-class movement. I argue that environment can be an important but still subordinate part of that movement. The movement against nuclear weapons did gather to it many people from many different walks of life and political perspectives -- but frankly I doubt it would have come into existence to reach that movement were it not for the various CPs linked to the USSR. _ CB: Again, maybe I am jumping in without knowing the issues, but I'm not arguing that red should be subordinated to green. Peace ( anti-war) was always a primary red issue, but nuclear weapons added a catastrophic quantum leap to it, augmenting the urgency. Now I'll really fall afoul of whatever, and say that sometimes I think the Soviet people saw avoidance of nuclear omnicide as more important
Re: Re: query
thanks. I like the idea of using a consistently-measured consumer price index, which the CPI-U is not. Since I am using more than one measure of inflation, I am not upset by the revisions. But this CPI-U-RS only goes back to 1967, which makes it sort of useless for my purposes. At 03:42 PM 6/29/00 -0400, you wrote: Jim Devine wrote: does anyone know the specifics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' CPI-U-X1 consumer price index? why is it preferred by mainstream macro-econometricians? It's an experimental revision of the old CPI numbers in accordance with the change in how housing costs were accounted for starting in 1983. It lowered reported inflation (which has the benefit of raising real incomes and, if it were applied to the poverty line, would lower the poverty rate). The latest back-projected CPI is the CPI-U-RS, which revises all the old numbers to account for all the wondrous changes in the CPI over the last couple of years. Details at http://www.bls.gov/pdf/cpirsqa.pdf. The Census Bureau has a statement on using both in the latest income report http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/p60-206.pdf. Doug Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: query
The latest back-projected CPI is the CPI-U-RS, which revises all the old numbers to account for all the wondrous changes in the CPI over the last couple of years. Details at http://www.bls.gov/pdf/cpirsqa.pdf. I detect irony in the word "wondrous," indicating that you don't approve of the changes. As Dave Richardson pointed out, however, the lower inflation rates that came out of the CPI revision is not all bad. If St. Alan sees a smaller dragon, he's less likely to lance the economy to death. Actually, we have to be conscious of the fact that measures of the average consumer price level are always going to be imperfect. This means that a different CPI should be used for different purposes. Unfortunately, since social security benefits, tax brackets, some government employee wages, and the like are indexed following the government's whim, the wrong index may be used ... I think that the CPI is miserable as a measure of the real cost of living that people face, since people have to pay all sorts of non-market costs. See my article in the recent URPE book that M.E Sharpe published, where I develop a first-guess cost-of-living (COL) measure. An updated version is supposed to show up in CHALLENGE this coming September. (This article arose from one of my many random thoughts in a pen-l discussion, BTW.) As Dean Baker has pointed out in articles in CHALLENGE and elsewhere, the CPI misses the way in which the development of capitalism creates new needs (like the Internet), though he doesn't say it exactly that way. Because the CPI is a poor measure of the cost of living that people face, it's not good for calculating "real" wages or standards of living. However, it doesn't matter that much if one is interested in relative standards of living (the rich vs. the poor). You can just take a ratio of the two nominal incomes. The CPI seems to be a measure of the health of the marketized part of the economy, so we can see if the market economy is suffering from inflation or not. That kind of thing seems relevant to the Fed's job. In Marx's terms, my COL measure is part of an effort to measure the use-values needed for people to live. (It's a futile effort, however, since use-values can't be quantified and thus added up; but it's useful to guess.) On the other hand, the CPI in its various incarnations is an effort to measure the inflation of the exchange values of commodities (where exchange-values are measured in money terms). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
CPI and all that
Re the discussion of CPI. I wrote about some of the issues related to a "cost of living" index and a CPI in a 1999 Review of Radical Political Economics article. I think I have my own best estimate of a cost of living index in it. The CPI is almost always used -- wrongly -- to generate "real" values, particularly for wages and earnings. Among the problems: the CPI assumes constant preferences -- in short it is assumed that folks in 1947 have the same likes/dislikes as folks in 2000. This is obviously false and preferences have become, if anything, "more demanding." The CPI is the cost of a "market basket" but it ignores the impacts on standards of living caused by increased housing costs, changes in the relative size of interest payments, changes in the tax bite, and so on. The CPI can't be used to deflate benefits as the "market basket" does not include benefit like products. The CPI-U-X1 has its flaws. It likely takes out too much of the costs related to housing than is appropriate (as recognized by others). Changes in the asset component of housing are excluded from the CPI not because they are unimportant but, simply, because the CPI has been defined to exclude assets. There is no other reason then this. For what it is worth, the work of the "Boskin Commission" was amazingly shoddy on almost all counts. I don't think anyone of those on the committee really know what the CPI is. Eric
Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
Rod wrote: Eliminating the distinction between town and country side is a very abstract though admirable goal. But what does it mean concretely. Better planning of new housing space? More green space in the city? Better and more efficient transportation systems? Or is there something more drastic in mind? You and Doug approach this as if we were talking about life-style. I can understand this. This is generally how people first react to the CM demand, as if they were being asked to give up Starbucks or something. It is not about this primarily. It is about addressing a fundamental problem in agriculture and ecology. The rise of the modern city was facilitated by the removal of the agrarian population. Then, the livestock was separated from the farm where crops were grown. This was made possible by modern transportation systems, sophisticated financing schemes, chemical fertilizer, mechanized plowing and reaping, etc. In the meantime, all of these 'advances' were made possible by the creation of modern urban industrial centers. With every "success" of the capitalist system, there was an environmental penalty. Marx wrote about this, as did Bebel, Bukharin, Kautsky and many other lesser known Marxists. Our problem is that most of the research into these questions is being done by by mainstream greens like Lester Brown's Worldwatch, while the militant opposition comes from fuzzy-minded anarchists or deep ecologists. And where are the self-declared Marxists? Mostly standing around with their thumbs up their asses worrying about whether they'll still be able to enjoy their morning Starbucks. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] (fwd)
sustainable than the U.S. But is a growth rate of 0 low enough? Could we feed and house 6 billion people if we all spent our time searching for "Jack-in-the-Pulpits or fishing for pickerel"? That kind of rural leisure is available to someone living in a rich country; in a poor country, you'd be more likely tilling the soil or grinding corn from dawn til dusk. These apocalpytic imaginings aren't serious politics, they're just lurid fantasies. Doug My dear chap, I was trying to respond to your question about the existential authenticity of my living on the Upper East Side 3 blocks from Woody Allen, while defending a simple life close to nature. Now you've switched gears in the most underhanded fashion and talk about overpopulation, a legitimate topic of social science rather than pop psychology. I ought to put a hungry wolverine in your knickers. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Bringing the US to Heel
On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Doug Henwood wrote: How do you propose Japan would collect on this demand? They may be the creditor, but the U.S. has all the bombs. That's what all those Chinese and French missile systems are for. If the new metropoles find the political will, there's plenty of offshore financing centers to fund a way. -- Dennis
Re: Re: Re: My looniness
Carrol: (and rightly so) has incorporated environmental concers into its program. The second point in a way is even bigger. The particular action you cite fits David Harvey's picture of environmental action, and David Harvey is categorized by Lou as a "Brown Marxist." I doubt that the protestors would have taken time out from more important business (political or personal) to leaflet on Wabash Ave. not about the local dump but on the dangers of Detroit drowning in Lake Erie 50 years from now. You totally misunderstand the issues, although I am glad that you are finally defining yourself with more clarity. I always suspected that beneath the barrage of personal insults that you direct against Mark and I there lurks a strong sympathy for Harvey's ideas, at least as you've gleaned them from email exchanges. Yes, one can be a "brown Marxist" and still be against environmental racism. In point of fact, the missing dimension in Harvey's thought is ecology itself. To take a stand against toxic dumps without considering the overall political economy which is driving their location in poor neighborhoods serves Marxism poorly. Marxists must think globally and in epochal terms. We do not pooh-pooh the problem of disappearing old-growth forests because it is not of immediate concern to black people, nor do we stop raising our voices about species extinction because middle-class people care more about the Panda or the Grizzly Bear. Those kinds of animals belong to all humanity and their disappearance would be as much of an assault on our true civilized values as if somebody went into the Metropolitan Museum and set fire to all the French Impressionist canvases. Harvey's problem is that he is an isolated, petty-bourgeois left professor like most of the denizens of PEN-L and wants desperately to connect with the underclass, in his case black Baltimoreans. He went into a saloon on Earth Day and all the black folks were muttering about how little it meant to them. So he decided to accomodate to their lack of understanding and wrote a book defending this kind of parochialism using Leibnizian philosophy. That's the long and the short of it. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in theWorld-System and National Emissions of] (fwd)
A recent committee of the Liberal government (Canada) has recommended that all pesticide use in cities be banned. Only agricultural uses would be legal. I think this might cause a great enforcement problem though. People will sneak out at night with their Weedex wonderbars. The main concern was the health ha zards of pesiticide use, particularly on children. CHeers, Ken Hanly Doug Henwood wrote Michael Perelman wrote: I just read that NY City is the largest consumer of pesticides in the state. Now that you have that part of the agricultural system, may the rest won't be too hard. Could you be a little less opaque? Do you mean that reducing pesticide use will require depopulating the cities? Where will everyone go? NYC also houses half the U.S. non-poverty households without cars. We use less energy here than practically any place in the USA. If you depopulate us, will we have to start driving? Or do I have to grow my own food and weave my own cloth? Doug
Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNational Emissions of]
Actually Lou. Although I have a good friend who works for Starbucks, I don't drink coffee, and have never been in a Starbucks. I know the history. I know the economic cost. But what is the programme. What are the concrete steps that you propose? Move the cows back into Central Park? There are any number of struggles going on the world concerning the split between the town and the country, which ones are worth getting involved in? which ones are not? Some of us do have political lives, that consist of more than meaningless harangues. It is all fine and good to say that you don't want to provide blueprints but political struggles are taking place every day in every city in the world about what direction to take with respect to new buildings, new roads, new parks. I like taking part in those discussion, because that is what my neighbours and friends are interested in. All I hear from the Leninists -- Join some Party of idiots who can't even talk to their neighbours. By the way. What is the CM demand? Rod Louis Proyect wrote: Rod wrote: Eliminating the distinction between town and country side is a very abstract though admirable goal. But what does it mean concretely. Better planning of new housing space? More green space in the city? Better and more efficient transportation systems? Or is there something more drastic in mind? You and Doug approach this as if we were talking about life-style. I can understand this. This is generally how people first react to the CM demand, as if they were being asked to give up Starbucks or something. It is not about this primarily. It is about addressing a fundamental problem in agriculture and ecology. The rise of the modern city was facilitated by the removal of the agrarian population. Then, the livestock was separated from the farm where crops were grown. This was made possible by modern transportation systems, sophisticated financing schemes, chemical fertilizer, mechanized plowing and reaping, etc. In the meantime, all of these 'advances' were made possible by the creation of modern urban industrial centers. With every "success" of the capitalist system, there was an environmental penalty. Marx wrote about this, as did Bebel, Bukharin, Kautsky and many other lesser known Marxists. Our problem is that most of the research into these questions is being done by by mainstream greens like Lester Brown's Worldwatch, while the militant opposition comes from fuzzy-minded anarchists or deep ecologists. And where are the self-declared Marxists? Mostly standing around with their thumbs up their asses worrying about whether they'll still be able to enjoy their morning Starbucks. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ -- 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
pop
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: okey! go and explain these to your audience in your radio show! Doug and over-population tonight under Wall Street lights... I'm completely anti-Malthusian. I never talk about overpopulation except to criticize Malthusians. I like big cities, too, where people are numerous and densely packed. I don't know how this fits into your ideological taxonomy, but since you already have me pegged as a "liberal," the choice is down to a modifying adjective or two. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNational Emissions of]
Rod: I know the history. I know the economic cost. But what is the programme. What are the concrete steps that you propose? Move the cows back into Central Park? You apparently didn't read the post on "Green Cuba", otherwise you wouldn't ask such flippant questions. There are any number of struggles going on the world concerning the split between the town and the country, which ones are worth getting involved in? You are confused. There are no "struggles" around such questions. Mostly what you have are desperate attempts by subsistence farmers to not be crushed by global capitalism, such as what took place in Guatemala in the 1980s. This has zero to do with Marx's concern with the "metabolic rift". which ones are not? Some of us do have political lives, that consist of more than meaningless harangues. For somebody who complains all the time about invective on PEN-L, you should follow your own advice. All I hear from the Leninists -- Join some Party of idiots who can't even talk to their neighbours. You are an abusive person. By the way. What is the CM demand? "Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country." Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System andNationalEmissions of] (fwd)
Is this in contrast to non-trivial tautologies? Cheers, Ken Hanly Carrol Cox wrote: Doug Henwood wrote: M A Jones wrote: But capitalism will collapse anyway. Right. Where have I heard that one before? Actually the prediction was made by many old guys millenia ago before capitalism was ever heard of. You know, the old stuff about the rise and fall of this or that. ONe doesn't have to be even remotely a marxist to know this. Now *dating* it -- that's something else. And of course it is also another quesion whether the collapse will be followed by socialism or barbarianism. But who can seriously object to the abstract proposition that "Capitalism will collapse." It seems a rather trivial tautology. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: query
Jim Devine wrote: I detect irony in the word "wondrous," indicating that you don't approve of the changes. As Dave Richardson pointed out, however, the lower inflation rates that came out of the CPI revision is not all bad. If St. Alan sees a smaller dragon, he's less likely to lance the economy to death. I care less about what the index does for St Alan's worldview than its accuracy. The only revisions that the Boskin commission or the BLS considered were ones that lowered the CPI. And the use of hedonic price measures on computers and other gadgets is pretty close to mystical. The change, which ripples through the national income accounts, has the effect of boosting growth rates, especially estimates of real investment, to almost implausible levels. James Medoff Andrew Harless have an interesting critique of the effects of the hedonic technique in the May 26 issue of Grant's Interest Rate Observer. Doug
Re: CPI and all that
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For what it is worth, the work of the "Boskin Commission" was amazingly shoddy on almost all counts. I don't think anyone of those on the committee really know what the CPI is. By the way, something like 20 or 30 economists testified before the Congressional panel that picked the members of the Boskin Commission. The six that were chosen were among the seven with the highest estimates of CPI overstatement; the seventh was a Canadian, and therefore presumably ineligble. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: query
At 07:06 PM 6/29/00 -0400, you wrote: Jim Devine wrote: I detect irony in the word "wondrous," indicating that you don't approve of the changes. As Dave Richardson pointed out, however, the lower inflation rates that came out of the CPI revision is not all bad. If St. Alan sees a smaller dragon, he's less likely to lance the economy to death. I care less about what the index does for St Alan's worldview than its accuracy. My key question was: accuracy for what purpose? I agree that for the purpose of measuring real living standards, the Boskin revisions lead to gross exaggeration of their rise. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
In developed countries at least many urban features are already in the countryside. The automobile enables rural dwellers to take advantage of urban shopping facilities equally with urban dwellers. Rural dwellings almost all have modern sanitiation and sewage systems albeit self-contained in the country as contrasted with towns. More and more rural people are connected to the Internet. Radio and satellite TV connections plus cell and other phones connect them with the "world" just as much as urbanites. Except for isolated areas medical care is available within reasonable distances, at least in Canada. I am sure I have left much out. Does doing away with this distinction mean locating hog barns and cattle feed lots in the city? I don't think that will be a big selling point. Having smaller family-run facilities in itself won't help. A recent study in Ontario found that the worst culprits for pollution were not the new state of the art big facilities but older smaller operations that have been running for years and that started before there was anything much in the way of controls. Cheers, Ken Hanly Rod Hay wrote: Eliminating the distinction between town and country side is a very abstract though admirable goal. But what does it mean concretely. Better planning of new housing space? More green space in the city? Better and more efficient transportation systems? Or is there something more drastic in mind? Dwelling solely in the world of the abstract is dangerous. Soon all that remains is the eternal dance of the categories or meaningless slogans. Rod -- 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: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
Louis Proyect wrote: You and Doug approach this as if we were talking about life-style. I can understand this. This is generally how people first react to the CM demand, as if they were being asked to give up Starbucks or something. It is not about this primarily. It is about addressing a fundamental problem in agriculture and ecology. The rise of the modern city was facilitated by the removal of the agrarian population. Then, the livestock was separated from the farm where crops were grown. This was made possible by modern transportation systems, sophisticated financing schemes, chemical fertilizer, mechanized plowing and reaping, etc. In the meantime, all of these 'advances' were made possible by the creation of modern urban industrial centers. With every "success" of the capitalist system, there was an environmental penalty. Marx wrote about this, as did Bebel, Bukharin, Kautsky and many other lesser known Marxists. Our problem is that most of the research into these questions is being done by by mainstream greens like Lester Brown's Worldwatch, while the militant opposition comes from fuzzy-minded anarchists or deep ecologists. And where are the self-declared Marxists? Mostly standing around with their thumbs up their asses worrying about whether they'll still be able to enjoy their morning Starbucks. Ok, so now we know there won't be Starbucks after the revolution. Finally a bit of detail. Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. Where are the Marxists? This neo-primitivist vision is quite anti-Marxist, and it's quite reasonable that Marxists are not participating in your vision. It comports perfectly with the politics and preferences of Brown and the fuzzies, though. On this sort of thing I'm with thumb-up-the-ass Ernest Mandel, who had this to say in Late Capitalism: 6. The genuine extension of the needs (living standards) of the wageearner, which represents a raising of his level of culture and civilization. In the end this can be traced back virtually completely to the conquest of longer time for recreation, both quantitatively (a shorter working week, free weekends, paid holidays, earlier pensionable age, and longer education) and qualitatively (the actual extension of cultural needs, to the extent to which they are not trivialized or deprived of their human content by capitalist commercialization). This genuine extension of needs is a corollary of the necessary civilizing function of capital. Any rejection of the so-called 'consumer society' which moves beyond justified condemnation of the commercialization and dehumanization of consumption by capitalism to attack the historical extension of needs and consumption in general (i.e., moves from social criticism to a critique of civilization), turns back the clock from scientific to utopian socialism and from historical materialism to idealism. Marx fully appreciated and stressed the civilizing function of capital, which he saw as the necessary preparation of the material basis for a 'rich individuality'. The following passage from the Grundrisse makes this view very clear: 'Capital's ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness, and thus creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one.' For socialists, rejection of capitalist 'consumer society' can therefore never imply rejection of the extension and differentiation of needs as a whole, or any return to the primitive natural state of these needs; their aim is necessarily the development of a 'rich individuality' for the whole of mankind. In this rational Marxist sense, rejection of capitalist 'consumer society' can only mean: rejection of all those forms of consumption and of production which continue to restrict man's development, making it narrow and one-sided. This rational rejection seeks to reverse the relationship between the production of goods and human labour, which is determined by the commodity form under capitalism, so that henceforth the main goal of economic activity is not the maximum production of things and the maximum private profit for each individual unit of production (factory or company), but the optimum self-activity of the individual person. The production of goods must be subordinated to this goal, which means the elimination of forms of production and labour which damage human health and
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
At 07:17 PM 6/29/00 -0400, you wrote: Ok, so now we know there won't be Starbucks after the revolution. Finally a bit of detail. no loss! Starbucks burns its beans, producing inferior coffee. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
Jim Devine wrote: Ok, so now we know there won't be Starbucks after the revolution. Finally a bit of detail. no loss! Starbucks burns its beans, producing inferior coffee. "I don't like it. It smells burnt." - Jackie Mason
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
Jim Devine wrote: no loss! Starbucks burns its beans, producing inferior coffee. http://www.junofish.com/jackie.html A Dissent on Starbucks by Jackie Mason Starbucks is the best example of a phony status symbol that means nothing, but people will still pay 10x as much for because there are French words all over the place. You want coffee in a coffee shop, that's 60 cents. But at Starbucks, Cafe Latte: $3.50. Cafe Cremier: $4.50. Cafe Suisse: $9.50. For each French word, another four dollars. Why does a little cream in coffee make it worth $3.50? Go into any coffee shop; they'll give you all the cream you want until you're blue in the face. Forty million people are walking around in coffee shops with jars of cream: "Here's all the cream you want!" And it's still 60 cents. You know why? Because it's called "coffee." If it's Cafe Latte - $4.50. You want cinnamon in your coffee? Ask for cinnamon in a coffee shop; they'll give you all the cinnamon you want. Do they ask you for more money because it's cinnamon? It's the same price for cinnamon in your coffee as for coffee without cinnamon - 60 cents, that's it. But not in Starbucks. Over there, it's Cinnamonnier - $9.50. You want a refill in a regular coffee shop, they'll give you all the refills you want until you drop dead. You can come in when you're 27 and keep drinking coffee until you're 98. And they'll start begging you: "Here, you want more coffee, you want more, you want more?" Do you know that you can't get a refill at Starbucks? A refill is a dollar fifty. Two refills, $4.50. Three refills, $19.50. So, for four cups of coffee - $350. And it's burnt coffee. It's burnt coffee at Starbucks, let's be honest about it. If you get burnt coffee in a coffee shop, you call a cop. You say, "Oh, it's a blend. It's a blend." It's a special bean from Argentina. " The bean is in your head. And there're no chairs in those Starbucks. Instead, they have these high stools. You ever see these stools? You haven't been on a chair that high since you were two. Seventy-three year old Jews are climbing and climbing to get to the top of the chair. And when they get to the top, they can't even drink the coffee because there's 12 people around one little table, and everybody's saying, "Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me." Then they can't get off the chair. Old Jews are begging Gentiles, "Mister, could you get me off this?" Do you remember what a cafeteria was? In poor neighborhoods all over this country, they went to a cafeteria because there were no waiters and no service. And so poor people could save money on a tip. Cafeterias didn't have regular tables or chairs either. They gave coffee to you in a cardboard cup. So because of that you paid less for the coffee. You got less, so you paid less. It's all the same as Starbucks - no chairs, no service, a cardboard cup for your coffee - except in Starbucks, the less you get, the more it costs. By the time they give you nothing, it's worth four times as much. Am I exaggerating? Did you ever try to buy a cookie in Starbucks? Buy a cookie in a regular coffee shop. You can tear down a building with that cookie. And the whole cookie is 60 cents. At Starbucks, you're going to have to hire a detective to find that cookie, and it's $9.50. And you can't put butter on it because they want extra. Do you know that if you buy a bagel, you pay extra for cream cheese in Starbucks? Cream cheese, another 60 cents. A knife to put it on, 32 cents. If it reaches the bagel, 48 cents. That bagel costs you $312. And they don't give you the butter or the cream cheese. They don't give it to you. They tell you where it is. "Oh, you want butter? It's over there. Cream cheese? Over here. Sugar? Sugar is here." Now you become your own waiter. You walk around with a tray. "I'll take the cookie. Where's the butter? The butter's here. Where's the cream cheese? The cream cheese is there." You walked around for an hour and a half selecting items, and then the guy at the cash register has a glass in front of him that says "Tips." You're waiting on tables for an hour, and you owe him money. Then there's a sign that says please clean it up when you're finished. They don't give you a waiter or a busboy. Now you've become the janitor. Now you have to start cleaning up the place. Old Jews are walking around cleaning up Starbucks. "Oh, he's got dirt too? Wait, I'll clean this up." They clean up the place for an hour and a half. If I said to you, "I have a great idea for a business. I'll open a whole new type of a coffee shop. A whole new type. Instead of 60 cents for coffee I'll charge $2.50, $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50. Not only that, I'll have no tables, no chairs, no water, no busboy, and you'll clean it up for 20 minutes after you're finished." Would you say to me, "That's the greatest idea for a business I ever heard! We can open a chain of these all over the world!" No,
Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
Does doing away with this distinction mean locating hog barns and cattle feed lots in the city? More flippancy. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
Doug: Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. You don't seem to be aware that smaller farms are more productive than large agribusiness type concerns. Can I refer you to the special MR issue on agriculture from a couple of years ago co-edited by Fred Magdoff and John Foster? I am sure you would find it most edifying. Where are the Marxists? They are over on the Marxism list where they belong. On this sort of thing I'm with thumb-up-the-ass Ernest Mandel, who had this to say in Late Capitalism: Well, at least Ernest was a revolutionary socialist, even if he hadn't give ecology the full attention it deserved. We need more people like him nowadays, if you gather my drift. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Marx and ecology
John Bellamy Foster has been doing some very interesting research into the question of whether Marx was an ecological thinker for some time now. There are 3 takes on this question. Some view Marx as explicitly anti-ecological. This is the case for social ecologists like John Clark and certain "brown Marxists" who embrace a falsely understood "Promethean" aspect to Marx's writings that is so detested by his Green opponents. Others think that Marx had some interesting observations on environmental questions, but they were sidebars rather than essential features of his thought. Finally, there are people like Paul Burkett and John Foster who make the case that the ecological dimension to Marx's thought is central. The attempt to bring Marx's ecological dimensions into the foreground have only gathered momentum over the past five years or so. When the modern ecology movement first took shape in the late 1960s, the analysis tended to be of a "post-materialist" character. It saw the ecological crisis in the framework of the "affluent society." This is understandable since the long boom of the post-WWII period tended to accentuate problems of this nature. Pollution was related to the indulgences of a consumer society and the eco-socialist critique--such as it was--had a strong Frankfurt orientation. The solution was to moderate the out-of-control growth of consumerist societies rather than to address underlying questions of political economy. Also, the debate was framed in terms of anthropocentrism versus ecocentrism. Marx, it was argued, erred in the direction of anthropocentrism. Since the 1980s, the classical Marxist approach has taken the offensive. This has meant that economics plays much more of a role. The accumulation of capital rather than cultural questions is central. It has also meant that the problem is seen in global terms rather than one isolated to affluent societies. The overarching concern is to discover a form of sustainable development that takes environmental justice into account. Poor nations should not make sacrifices on behalf of rich nations. In rich nations, the poor and the racial minorities should not bear the brunt of toxic dumping, etc. The only solution, needless to say, is socialism which will bring economic development under the rational control of the producers themselves. The ecological crisis has prompted nearly every school of thought to return to its ideological foundations in order to come up with a solution. For neo-Classical economists, this means trying to bring nature into the sphere of commodities. They argue that the problem is that natural resources like soil and water are not properly priced. If the same market laws that dictate the price of manufactured goods operated in realm of nature, then the "invisible hand" would protect such precious commodities as the soil and water. For Marxists, an analogous effort has taken place, which seeks to discover either explicit or implicit concerns with nature in the central body of Marx's work. Foster has come up with some very interesting insights into the rather explicit concern that Marx had with the central ecological crisis of the 19th century: soil fertility. There is actually a long tradition of Marxist research into agrarian questions going back to Marx and Engels. Lenin and Kautsky also wrote important articles on the question. Michael Perelman, the moderator of PEN-L, has also written on the topic: "Farming For Profit In A Hungry World: Capital And The Crisis In Agriculture." I plan to read and report on this book before long. The context for Marx's examination of the agrarian question was the general crisis of soil fertility in the period from 1830 to 1870. The depletion of soil nutrients was being felt everywhere, as capitalist agriculture broke down the old organic interaction that took place on small, family farms. When a peasant plowed a field with ox or horse-drawn plows, used an outhouse, accumulated compost piles, etc., the soil's nutrients were replenished naturally. As capitalist agriculture turned the peasant into an urban proletariat, segregated livestock production from grain and food production, the organic cycle was broken and the soil gradually lost its fertility. The need to artificially replenish the soil's nutrients led to scientific research into the problem. Justin Von Liebeg was one of the most important thinkers of the day and he was the first to posit the problem in terms of the separation between the city and the countryside. While the research proceeded, the various capitalist powers sought to gain control over new sources of fertilizers. This explains "guano imperialism," which I referred to in my post on Peru the other day. England brought Peru into its neocolonial orbit because it was the most naturally endowed supplier of bird dung in the world. In 1847, 227 thousand tons of guano were imported from Peru into England. This commodity was as important to England's economy as
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
Doug Henwood wrote: Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. No, the revo will not be responsible for the loss of modern transportation and the collapse of the agro-system which is based on using soil to hold down plants while petroleum-derived chemicals are applied, for the purpose of creating what are called 'phantom acres': ie, we use sunlight trapped a long time ago to artifically boost production: "Catton expands on the "ghost acreage" concept raised by Georg Borgstrom, who was talking about food. The term in Borgstrom referred to imports from elsewhere, meaning supplementation of what a region or nation has available internally with the product of some other region's or country's land and sunlight./1/ Catton initially is interested in imports from elsewhen, meaning the use of fossil-fuel energy, or supplmentation with the product of land and sunlight from long ago. He uses "fossil acreage," meaning the "energy we obtain from coal, petroleum, and natural gas...the number of additional acres of farmland that would have been needed to grow organic fuels with equivalent energy content."/2/ Dependence on this fossil acreage yields dependence on "phantom carrying capacity" that evaporates when the fossil fuels become unavailable./3/ A few pages later, he defines phantom carrying capacity as "either the illusory or the extremely precarious capacity of an environment to support a given life form or a given way of living" (Chris Kuykendall) The revo will happen *because capitalism's energetics basis has collapsed*. That is why transport, agrobiz etc will also mutate in forms which will look like a collapse. Of course an enormously wasteful system like the US contains enormous potentials for energy saving and no doubt something approaching normal life could be sustained by using 50% less fossil, and in time much less. There are Marxists who think that's just another profit opportunity and to a degree they are right. But what you have to reckin with is that the history of capitalist accumulation was predicated logically on the existence of fossil fuel and the ability to constantly cheapen this input and to increase energy efficiency. My question is not so much about whethere normal life can be preserved albeit with some very important changes. I just don't see how capitalism can survive or be the agency of those changes, and that is why there will be and already is, a developing crisis. It won't go aware just be pretending it aint there. It is there. I have yet to see you embrace this even as a hypothesis. The collapse of Big Oil will have devastating side-effects including on food production. It will quite inevitably require many more people to go work on the land. You may not like that, but you still have to explain what is the alternative. Yelling at people that they are atavists, apocalyptics etc, doesn't answer any more than Jim Devine throwing queenie fits answers the questions. Whenever I raise the issue I get literally dozens of offlist emails from lurkers on pen-l who want to no more but are not willing to expose themselves to ridicule from the 'orthodox' list-professors. Where are the Marxists? This neo-primitivist vision is quite anti-Marxist, and it's quite reasonable that Marxists are not participating in your vision. It comports perfectly with the politics and preferences of Brown and the fuzzies, though. But no marxists round here are promoting such a vision; it's a phantasm of your own. You're locked in struggle with figments of your own imagining. And how is Mandel present? Try to answer the question: do you think oil is an exhaustible and irreplaceable energy supply, or not? Do you side with Morris Adelman, the guru invoked by your own resident oil expert Greg Nowell, and think that oil is 'Infinite, a renewable resource' ? If you accept that it is running out, what do YOU think we should do? What is YOUR plan, apart from asking me for mine? Mark
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] (fwd)
Growth of 0% is fine, but unfoprtunately it's not happening, especially in the US, where the population may rise to 500mn by 2050 and not stop there, either. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 11:32 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20981] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] (fwd) sustainable than the U.S. But is a growth rate of 0 low enough? Could we feed and house 6 billion people if we all spent our time searching for "Jack-in-the-Pulpits or fishing for pickerel"? That kind of rural leisure is available to someone living in a rich country; in a poor country, you'd be more likely tilling the soil or grinding corn from dawn til dusk. These apocalpytic imaginings aren't serious politics, they're just lurid fantasies. Doug My dear chap, I was trying to respond to your question about the existential authenticity of my living on the Upper East Side 3 blocks from Woody Allen, while defending a simple life close to nature. Now you've switched gears in the most underhanded fashion and talk about overpopulation, a legitimate topic of social science rather than pop psychology. I ought to put a hungry wolverine in your knickers. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: query
My key question was: accuracy for what purpose? I agree that for the purpose of measuring real living standards, the Boskin revisions lead to gross exaggeration of their rise. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Even after watching 1900 House? Brad DeLong, who *likes* his new dishwasher *a* *lot*...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
At 01:49 AM 06/30/2000 +0100, you wrote: Yelling at people that they are atavists, apocalyptics etc, doesn't answer any more than Jim Devine throwing queenie fits answers the questions. so Mr. Jones is gay-bashing me? I find that insults are always the last refuge of the fuzzy thinker. In any event, though Jones thinks of this as an insult, I do not. My sister is gay and she is an excellent person. However, I think that gay-bashing does not belong on pen-l. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: query
At 06:03 PM 06/29/2000 -0700, you wrote: My key question was: accuracy for what purpose? I agree that for the purpose of measuring real living standards, the Boskin revisions lead to gross exaggeration of their rise. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Even after watching 1900 House? I don't watch any TV except escapist TV. If it's the opiate of the masses, give me the real thing. So US Public Broadcasting is out. Give me "Dharma and Greg" any day -- or "Becker" (the only known TV character with Asperger's syndrome). Brad DeLong, who *likes* his new dishwasher *a* *lot*... There's a good comment by Richard Powers in his novel, GAIN, where the protagonist wonders if the dishwasher is really worth it. After all, she has to clean the dishes _before_ she puts them in the washer. Then she has to scrape off the gunk that was hardened on the plates by the high temperatures. It also involved higher monetary costs (and environmental costs, with an important impact on the plot) and disinfects the dishes much more than they need. (I've added to -- or subtracted from -- the actual comment, since I couldn't find it.) I think that _giving up_ a dishwasher is involves more cost than the benefit one gets from using it for the first time. This asymmetry makes it like an addictive drug. That's a problem with the whole idea of the "1900 House" as I understand it. These folks have been totally adapted to late 20th century living. Their experience is _totally different_ from those who were totally adapted to late 19th century living. The idea that sticking the 20th centurians in a 1900 house says something about differences in standard of living is nonsense. It's not like they're going to be given typhoid or dysentery, after all. Without the public health difference, the idea that we can learn something from their experience about "how it was back then" is silly. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
the cost of living
Thanks, Eric Nilsson, for telling me about your excellent article in THE REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS, vol. 31 no. 4 (Fall 1999). It is quite well done, in a very clear and systematic way. It's truly Gordonian, while if Brad ever gets to rewriting his book on the standard of living of people in the 20th century, he should read it and learn. However, there's a confusion between Eric's and my meaning of the phrase "cost of living." The usual orthodox economist simply assumes that the consumer price index measures the "cost of living" without spending much time thinking what that phrase means. Eric brings in Robert Pollak's distinction between the expenditure cost of living (E Coli) and the income cost of living (I Coli). If anything, the standard consumer price index measures the E Coli. But as Eric so clearly shows, one can suffer a fall in real income even if both one's nominal income and the CPI are constant, if the needed expenditures that aren't counted as part of the CPI become more expensive. For example, if home insurance prices rise drastically (raising the I Coli), that hurts the consumer's ability to buy the "basket" that is used to define the CPI and thus hurts his or her real standard of living. So Eric develops a measure of the I Coli, which unfortunately did not show up in the appendix, because the latter didn't get printed. Eric also brings in the key assumption of the orthodox view that the CPI can be used to measure "real" standards of living, i.e., the constancy of tastes. But that's nonsense, as Dean Baker has also argued. New needs arise regularly, changing people's tastes. As a first approximation, following the work of Alan Krueger and Aaron Siskind, Eric argues that the CPI-U-X1 (without the Boskin "improvements") represents a pretty good estimate of the income cost of living once changing tastes are taken into account. The changing tastes effect and the I Coli effect cancel out the reasonable part of the Boskin effect. Anyway, both Eric and I have different definitions of what we mean by the cost of living. He's emphasizing the income cost of living, where I'm interested in something that might be called the "utility cost of living" (U Coli). This includes not only marketed products as part of the story but also non-marketed factors. My ideas is noted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics when they say: ""a more complete cost-of-living index would go beyond [the CPI] to take into account the changes in other governmental or environmental factors that affect consumers' well-being" (Gibson, http://stats.bls.gov/cpi1998g.htm ). My measure brings in such things as environmental costs: when the smog gets worse, one has to wash the clothes more often, etc. This lowers someone's standard of living just like as with the story explaining the I Coli. I try to get a handle on this by using the consumption-oriented component of the Genuine Progress Indicator as an indicator of what people are actually getting from the economy as a whole (both market and non-market segments). Again, my article is in the new URPE book just published by M.E. Sharpe and will be in CHALLENGE in September. I'd appreciate comments. As I mentioned, my U Coli measure is not the kind of "cost of living" that measures the performance of markets, since it includes the effects of external costs benefits, non-marketed goods and bads, "necessary costs" of living, etc. Even though it says something about standards of living -- i.e., that real wages have fallen much more drastically than indicated by the ratio of the nominal wage to the CPI -- it's not something that Alan Greenspan should care about. He should be concerned with something like the CPI-U-X1, which reflects the behavior of markets. BTW, the US system of CPIs seems really messed up. The CPI-U (for urban consumers) isn't comparable between before 1983 and after, since it uses different methods to measure the cost of owner-occupied housing. The CPI-U-X1 is consistent between these two periods -- but introduces inconsistencies as soon as the Boskin "reforms" are introduced. Then, there's the new CPI-U-RS, which brings in the dubious Boskin changes all the way back -- to the 1970s. Before that, you're on your own. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Zimbabwe post election
From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] Interesting to see Patrick Bond tonight in a heavily clipped interview on BBC 2 Newsnight about the Zimbabwe elections. Patrick was suggesting, if I got the point correctly, that Morgan Tsvangirai was boxing Mugabe in by offering some sort of compromise with the implicit risk in the background that if Mugabe imposed a more open dictatorship he would suffer the probable fate of other dictatorial opponents of the world bank. Perhaps I got that wrong. It's been a strange few days duelling with the bourgeois media, trying to make difficult arguments in soundbites. Too hard for me. The NYT even requested the following piece from me, but then just decided not to run it. Maybe it sets up the context a bit better, Chris... and I'll be doing some reporting for Red Pepper next week on struggles within the struggle (over the MDC's heart and mind)... *** Post-Election Zimbabwe Showcases Power of World Bank/IMF HARARE--Now comes financial crunch time for Robert Mugabe. The barest of parliamentary election victories--against the newly-formed Movement for Democratic Change, led by a popular trade unionist--sets the stage for what are likely two more years of political bickering, social strife and economic decline, before the next presidential election. Four harsh months of brutally populist campaigning are behind him, and Mugabe must now bite several bullets at once. He upped the rhetorical stakes with threats to redistribute 804 white-owned commercial farms (many occupied by several thousand liberation war veterans), and indeed vowed to confiscate all white-held land and even white-owned mining companies. With a nod and a wink, Thabo Mbeki stood by him, alone amongst respected world leaders. One carrot the South African president dangled to persuade Mugabe to lift his paramilitary-style intimidation blanket in the days preceding last weekend's election was another bite at the IMF/World Bank apple, probably when an IMF team visits in early August. Mbeki's "softly-softly" diplomacy may have worked, for political violence declined dramatically last week (though not entirely). Access to Bretton Woods funds, just a few months after Zimbabwe's first major default on World Bank credits, would be an offer Mugabe shouldn't logically refuse. There is practically no foreign exchange in the Reserve Bank's coffers. As a result, the economy is periodically paralysed by fuel and imported energy shortages, a semi-official black market in hard currency with a 50% spread, the highest nominal interest rates ever, and even a bread shortage looming by year-end. Ironically, just five years ago, Zimbabwe was Washington's newest African "success story," as Harare embraced macroeconomic policies promoted by Bank and IMF lenders, and even conducted joint military exercises with the Pentagon. But will taking on new loans--plus the standard menu of harsh conditions--require the psyche of a political chameleon less conceited than Mugabe? Mugabe excels in IMF-bashing, after all, famously telling Fund staff to "Shut up!" late last year. In reality, though, from independence in 1980 until quite recently, he followed their advice unfailingly. And that is a large part of the problem Mugabe faces today. From the outset, Zimbabwe made bad policy choices and succumbed to armtwisting by Washington. Finance minister Bernard Chidzero, who was head of the IMF/Bank Development Committee during the late 1980s, borrowed massively, figuring that repayments--which required 16% of export earnings in 1983--would "decline sharply until we estimate it will be about 4% within the next few years." The main lender, the World Bank, fully concurred with the prediction. Instead, however, Zimbabwe's debt servicing spiralled up to an untenable 37% of export earnings by 1987. Meantime, the IMF began imposing fiscal constraints, forcing cuts in education/health spending and food subsidies. Also in the mid- 1980s, the World Bank showered peasants with unaffordable micro-loans, as a substitute for genuine land reform. Hampered by "willing-buyer, willing-seller" constraints on land and without structural change in agricultural markets, the Bank strategy floundered. Fully 80% of borrowers defaulted by 1989 and the best farms continued to fall under white control whenever they came on the market. (The few good farms redistributed went to powerful Mugabe cronies.) Chidzero then persuaded Mugabe to ditch controls on prices, trade and financial flows, liberalizing the economy through an Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) in 1991. ESAP was supposedly "homegrown," but World Bank staff drafted much of the document, which was substantively identical to those imposed across Africa during the 1980s-90s. ESAP brought immediate, unprecedented increases in interest rates and inflation, which were exacerbated (but not caused) by droughts in 1992 and 1995. As money drained from the country, the stock
Neo-classical gas
I'm starting to wonder about my sanity in re: the pile-up of gross distortions of n-c theory in the past week. This is not to say there are legions of things to criticize in NC theory, but I have to wonder what sort of picture people have gotten (or devised by themselves). I'm no theoretical wizard myself, but the barrage of error seems to be on a pretty low level. The straw breaking the proverbial camel's back was the stuff about methodological individualism as the fallacious root of fallacious econ. Evidently some critics gloss over the fact that macro-theory is not based on "adding up" the decisions of individuals. What it is based on is another matter, worthy of criticism in its own right. It is true that the general context strips individuals of their social relations, but C = f(Y) is not formally derived from lots of little c's and y's. In Keynes, of course, it isn't formally derived at all. He basically pulls it out of his ass. Micro isn't as bad as implied either, or not bad in the same way. I could say demand for Starbucks' coffee depends on price, urban density, and the unmarried share of the population, the latter non-individualistic social relations of sorts. Typically the claims of micro models are much more modest than the criticism would imply. Then there's the poop about micro theory not being capable of modelling altruistic behavior, something any putz -- including me -- who had cracked a public finance text would know is wrong. Then there's this canard that n-c theory posits some infinitude of resources derived from price signals. MP says this is 'implicit doctrine,' which sounds like an oxymoron to me. You could say n-c theory inspires idiotic optimism as some kind of cultural artifact, but that's a different matter. Just because a price increase constitutes an incentive to look for substitutes doesn't mean supplies will always be forthcoming. Talk about your ecological fallacy. I'll only note in passing the warped concept of efficiency that is attributed to nc theory. In the past I took the trouble of posting a textbook-like precis on what efficiency is held to be, in contrast to the Third Reich imagery. Maybe it doesn't matter if most familiar with 'straight' econ will not be any more persuaded by good criticism than bad . . . Feh. Time for bed. mbs
Re: Re: Re: energy crises
But I do keep receiving messages! This time when I finaly got connected I've got more than 100 of them. What is wrong? Boris -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 27 ÉÀÎÑ 2000 Ç. 22:47 Subject: [PEN-L:20749] Re: Re: energy crises Nordhaus assumed that there would always be an available "backstop" technology. I think that he had nukes in mind at the time. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: energy
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/28/00 05:09PM Charles It is not a matter of faith. It is a simple calculation. Amount of energy available minus amount used by humans in the course of their history. The result if a very large positive number. We are not going to run out of energy. _ CB: Mark Jones and Lou Proyect seem to get a different result for the difference than you with respect to fossil fuels. "Amount of energy used by humans in the course of their history" has been drastically, "exponentially" less up until about two hundred years ago, no ? There was no internal combustion engine until about a hundred years ago. That means for the first 200,000 years minus one hundred years there was almost no fossil fuel used compared to the last one hundred. I'm sure you are aware of exponential functions and all that. They explode. __ Alternatives to internal combustion engines are technological infants, but they are available and will soon be economic. CB: Well, socialism is coming soon too, but will it be in time to avoid a major catastrophe. I mean real major. It is not guaranteed that the logic of capital accumulation will be rational relative to developing the new energy technologies you mention. For example, GM caused our public mass transit system in Detroit to be ripped up in the 1930's so that they could sell more cars. Unless GM and its class partners are overthrown, they may sell out the human race on the new energy technologies you mention. Perhaps a better example in reverse, the bourgeoisie caused the development of nuclear weapons, an affirmative technological development that is the destructive equivalent of not developing the new energy technologies you mention above. This demonstrates that capitalists are capable of species-suicide or species-catastrophe short of extinction, levels of irrationality in trying to hold on to their profiteering system. Rather than let socialism develop, the capitalists instituted a nuclear weapons race to thwart it. There is a tendency here to ignore that capitalists have developed the mode of destruction as fantastically as they has developed the mode of production, evincing thereby a world historic level of irrationality and tendency to species-suicide/catastrophe. Right now, the U.S. is more focused on developing Star Wars, a dangerous extention of the nuclear arms race, than the new energy technologies you mention. I urge a lot less faith in the inevitable rationality of the bourgeoisie. CB
Re: My looniness
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/28/00 05:27PM And Rod also wrote: Oh Carrol get with the programme. You are to organize all the True Believers and take them off to Jonestown It has occurred to me that in speaking of political activity many of us do not make clearly enough the distinction between agitation and organizing. They are inseparable in practice, but they are distinguishable and should be distinguished in thought. My central concern in reference to the issue of global warming is that I think Mark's and Lou's own intensity has concealed for them that for large masses of people global warming will *not* work as agitational material. People *can* (have been / will be) mobilized around issues most of which demand concern for a future beyond that of those in motion. It's just that as a point of departure global warming will not work. ) CB: I don't think the facts of the recent history of party formation support you here, Carrol. The biggest new party in the world in the last 40 years is the Greens. We are a long way from Lady Bird's "Don't be a litterbug" campaign. Another example, the one demonstration held in conjunction with the Detroit BRC meeting was to protest a polluted dump on Wabash street. A leader of Detroiters for Environmental Justice was a co-chair of the BRC host committee. I think a lot more people than explicitly express it now, have by common sense in the back of their mind a concern that they can't just keep "partying" at this level without paying the piper eventually. It is like smoking cigarettes. If given a way and if everybody else starts stopping, they would like to stop. Also, to me , the struggle against nuclear weapons is half an "environmental" struggle. CB
On Mark to Rod, was Re: Re: re: energy
On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 18:10:45 -0500, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: So unless you really do agree with Hans Ehrbar on the need for an elitist putsch to stop global warming, you had better give some thought to how that mass support can be (beginning now) marshalled It is not my view that an elitist putsch can stop global warming. On the contrary, only those who experience the exploitation and oppression of capitalism by their own body and soul every day are able to put up the consistent fight against capitalism that is needed. An appeal to the intellect that the world is burning will not change the members of PEN-L or any other email list into the devoted, disciplined, selfless fighters which are able to overturn the system. Thinking that it can or that it ought to is idealism. Such fighters exist today, capitalism creates lots of them every day with its cruelty, but in the leading industrial countries they will always be in a minority. We intellectuals have to join the organizations of these committed workers and help them write a consistent programme how to avoid ecological catastrophe by a world wide proletarian revolution, and establish a minority dictatorship which will carry out this programme with Stalinist methods. You will be surprised how many liberals with support such a proletarian-based movement once it is big enough. Therefore my advice is: join any proletarian communist party, whether it be the Worker's World Party (my personal favorite at the moment), the CPUSA, the SWP, etc., whatever, and help them reach more workers or improve their theory. For those who cannot function in such an environment, an alternative might be to use your computer skills to build a new internet-based international which combines all these scattered proletarian organizations. Sven Buttler and Jim Hillier's marxist-leninist-list is working in this direction. Or use your computer skills to write the software for a computer-based planned economy, which could then perhaps be adopted by countries like Cuba, using Cockshott and Cottrell's "Towards a New Socialism" as the starting point. Whatever you do, think big. Stop diddling around. I am appending a message I sent to the bhaskar list on June 12 which explains more of the theory behind this. Hans Ehrbar. Sunday morning I sent the following message to Louis Proyect's marxism list and to leninist-international. I think it might also be of interest to the Bhaskar list, since it was inspired by RB in at least two respects: (1) Bhaskars criticism of Marx that he, following Hegel, put too much emphasis on internal, at the expense of external contradictions (the ecological limits of the earth are an external contradiction of capitalism, and Marx's dictum in the preface that "the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or are at least in the course of formation" is only valid for internal, not for external contradictions). (2) Bhaskar's repudiation of the fact-value distinction which encourages me to say here that only those who truly hate the capitalist system have a correct grasp of its reality. I have not yet received any responses for this posting on the other two lists. Something tells me that I might get a response on this list here. Capitalism makes profits by the exploitation of labor. Those who create all the surplus value, on which capital depends in order to function, see their lives reduced to drudgery, without enough time or money to care for their children, without access to proper medical care, see their neighborhoods blighted, their youth terrorized by police, denied their life chances and a decent education, driven into drugs. Every day they are reminded of the contempt the system has for their lives and everything that is dear to them. These people get to the point where every molecule in their body hates the system. They are also the ones that can overturn the system, because capital needs them, organizes them, teaches them hard work and discipline, and at the same time makes implacable enemies out of them. They are willing to face bullets and torture and their own deaths and continue fighting after 1000 defeats. This is what it takes to overturn the system. This is the vanguard which needs to organize itself world wide, even if they are a minority in countries like the USA. Capitalism also silently destroys the ecosphere. This side effect is worse than the human suffering of the workers, because it threatens to end all human civilization. It alarms lots of people of all classes, their numbers will eventually be greater than the minority I just talked about, and it drives some of them to heroic deeds. But being an external contradiction, it is not experienced by millions on the same gut level as exploitation is. On the contrary, many environmental fighters live under a
RE: energy entropy + capitalist crisis
Several quick comments . . . MJ: . . . The argument that energy supply is 'infinite' derives from the neo-classical economics concept of substitutability. . . . I don't think this is true of neo-classical econ, namely there is no doctrine of infinite resources that I recall from the course in resources that I took. (I was doing well in it, until the finals, which coincided with the baseball playoffs). There are theorems about the optimal rate of exhaustion of (exhaustible) resources. Certainly prices are held to inspire investment in substitutes, but there is no guarantee that such substitutes will be found or be feasible in the long run. There are technical and natural limits in play. I suppose it is possible that in some professorial treatments, simple optimism not unlike the sort I reflected is offered as some kind of scientific certainty. I wonder if anyone is familiar with Nicholas Georgescu-Rogin (sp?). He was brought to my dept to give a seminar way back in '81 or so and seemed to have a similar take on all this, albeit at a very high level of mathematical abstraction. He was of Romanian extraction, I think, and flipped everyone out by talking about constant, fixed, and variable capital. mbs
Re: RE: energy entropy + capitalist crisis
Max, Undoubtedly baseball was the right choice. It was Samuelson who said something about 'the planet doesn't need resources; resources are infinite' (can't remember the exact quote, can't be bothered to look it up. He was talking about oil + substitutability at the time, the idiot). Morris Adelman, oil industry economist sans pareil, wittered on about 'oil is essentially infinite, a renewable resource' etc (can't be bothered, etc. I'm just listening to Bob Dylan: All the authorities, they stand around and boast' etc. That seems a better idea even than baseball. Next I'm gonna drink a bottle of non-renewable Gouts et Couleurs (vin de pays d'Oc. Oc as you know is a country which named itself after its favourite word, Oc, meaning Yes. This is the kind of place I want to live. The girls are great there, of course.) Georgescu-Roegen, Oc. I agree. This list should close down for a week while everyone goes away and reads him,Oc? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Max Sawicky" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 3:57 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20938] RE: energy entropy + capitalist crisis Several quick comments . . . MJ: . . . The argument that energy supply is 'infinite' derives from the neo-classical economics concept of substitutability. . . . I don't think this is true of neo-classical econ, namely there is no doctrine of infinite resources that I recall from the course in resources that I took. (I was doing well in it, until the finals, which coincided with the baseball playoffs). There are theorems about the optimal rate of exhaustion of (exhaustible) resources. Certainly prices are held to inspire investment in substitutes, but there is no guarantee that such substitutes will be found or be feasible in the long run. There are technical and natural limits in play. I suppose it is possible that in some professorial treatments, simple optimism not unlike the sort I reflected is offered as some kind of scientific certainty. I wonder if anyone is familiar with Nicholas Georgescu-Rogin (sp?). He was brought to my dept to give a seminar way back in '81 or so and seemed to have a similar take on all this, albeit at a very high level of mathematical abstraction. He was of Romanian extraction, I think, and flipped everyone out by talking about constant, fixed, and variable capital. mbs
Re: Re: Re: Re: energy crises
You have Yeltsin here? Cool. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "GBK" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 1:45 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20935] Re: Re: Re: energy crises But I do keep receiving messages! This time when I finaly got connected I've got more than 100 of them. What is wrong? Boris -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 27 ÉÀÎÑ 2000 Ç. 22:47 Subject: [PEN-L:20749] Re: Re: energy crises Nordhaus assumed that there would always be an available "backstop" technology. I think that he had nukes in mind at the time. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
entropy
The word/concept entropy is often used by the environmental movement but seldom understood. In physics it is used as measurement of the degradation or dispersement of energy in a closed system. In every day speech it usually refers to thermal energy, and measures the dissipation of energy that is not available for conversion to human uses. The closed system we are talking about is the solar system. There are three sources of energy available to us. Solar, nuclear and geo-thermal. Fossil fuel's are solar energy that has been stored in hydrocarbon molecules. So the vast majority of the energy we use is solar in origin. For practical human purposes the amount existing of all three is infinite. And the estimated time of dissipation of solar energy is in the billions of years. No one, I hope, is expecting the imminent death of the sun. The question then becomes on of the ability of humans to capture, store and use that energy as it dissipates. It is purely a technical question. And it is here that the question of socialism, capitalism or some other ism enters the picture. What set of property relations provides the most incentive for human scientist and engineers to develop new ways of capturing that energy. Mark seems to be saying that it doesn't matter what system we have in place, it simply is not technically possible. I disagree, so I will continue to talk about incentives, market, political, etc. which I think will improve the situation, and leave the hysterics to others. Since the scientist, engineers, etc. disagree on the possibilities, I don't see how we can resolve the issue. -- 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: Re: :We used 10 times as much energy in the20thcentury as in the 1,000
Brad De Long wrote: During WW II in the war in the Pacific, one of the most horrendous battles was fought over the island of Tarawa. Death in great numbers came to both sides. Tarawa is now beneath the Pacific ocean, a casualty of global warming. Gene Coyle 30,000 people live on Tarawa. The expected high today is 86 degrees. The high point on Tarawa is 260 feet above sea level. Where do people pick up such misinformation? Brad DeLong Well, I read in a book that "In 1999, two islands in the Kiribati Archipelago in the South Pacific were the first to be submerged by rising sea levels due to global warming, and others in the area were in danger." The source given was a story in The Globe and Mail, June 14, 1999 titled "Global Warming sinks islands." I had read somewhere else that Tarawa had gone under the waves. I made the careless link to connect the two. It turns out that an islet in the middle of the Tarawa lagoon, Bikeman, has disappeared, but perhaps more due to a change in current due to construction of a causeway between two other islands nearby. Another islet near a neighboring island has gone, and another near Tarawa is close to gone. Gene Coyle
Re: Re: Re: Re: energy crises
I think that those messages came before the changes were made. I hope that we are ok now. GBK wrote: But I do keep receiving messages! This time when I finaly got connected I've got more than 100 of them. What is wrong? Boris -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 27 ÉÀÎÑ 2000 Ç. 22:47 Subject: [PEN-L:20749] Re: Re: energy crises Nordhaus assumed that there would always be an available "backstop" technology. I think that he had nukes in mind at the time. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: RE: energy entropy + capitalist crisis
Max. There s no doctrine of infinite resources for any specific resource, but since substitutes always exist there is an implict doctrine. Max Sawicky wrote: I don't think this is true of neo-classical econ, namely there is no doctrine of infinite resources that I recall from the course in resources that I took. Nicholas Georgescu-Rogen was anti-marxist, but used quite a bit of Marx. His important contribution was to realize that production took place in time through using stocks. This allowed him to make strong statements about resources. He was probably the first economist to use the concepts of entropy and hysteresis. I wonder if anyone is familiar with Nicholas Georgescu-Rogin (sp?). He was brought to my dept to give a seminar way back in '81 or so and seemed to have a similar take on all this, albeit at a very high level of mathematical abstraction. He was of Romanian extraction, I think, and flipped everyone out by talking about constant, fixed, and variable capital. mbs -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
