Re: The brutality of global capitalism

[Rob Schaap]

The Australian Kopek is 18.5% down on January - at an all-time low of 54.8
cents ... and falling as I watch.  The ABC says the Reserve Bank donated
$100 million to the speculators today alone.  Zurich's sickeningly oily
David Hale reckons it's because we've got no big-profile
IT/telecommunications entities on our stock exchange.  Labor reckons it's
because our recent descent into a goods and services tax - bought with
enormous income tax cuts to the rich - is beginning to contribute to
inflation.

I reckon it's nothing to do with our dollar.  It's your bastard that's
doing it.  And now it's so relatively big'n'tough, I s'pose you'll waltz
in, pick up our productive assets at about 2/3 of their value, and help our
dollar back to 60 cents before people begin to realise we no longer have an
economy, and sell it back down.  What then, eh?

Reckon a few Yank Olympics vacationers might be declaring the odd mining
company at the customs desks three weeks hence ...

Sigh,
Rob.

Re: Announcement: MARXISM 2000 Conference -- NEXTWEEK

[Brad De Long]

>MARXISM 2000 -- the 4th International Gala Conference hosted by 
>Rethinking Marxism -- is finally here.,,
>
>
>
>#
>Stephen Cullenberg  Office:  909-787-5037, ext. 1573
>Professor of EconomicsFax:909-787-5685
>University of California   Email:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Riverside, CA 92521 http://www.ucr.edu/CHSS/depts/econ/sc.htm
>

Any interesting papers on the web?


Brad DeLong

Re: UK Petrol tax revolt

[Brad De Long]

>  We expected networks to deliver more protests against global 
>capitalism, of the sort that have just taken place in Melbourne - 
>Congratulations!
>
>But there are special reasons why networks have produced the cascade 
>of positive feedback leading to the petrol tax revolt in Britain.
>
>The petrol blockade in Britain has developed as suddenly as the 
>national mourning over Diana, promoted by 24 hour news services. It 
>has also been lubricated by the new networking possiblilities of 
>e-mail, fax, mobile phones. It has a contagious sense of populist 
>power against the powers that be. Blair is now on the wrong side of 
>that public perception...

Let me second Chris Burford: the reduction of taxes on oil is not a 
step forward in the direction of utopia...


Brad DeLong

Re: Re: Thatcher and nationalism

[JKSCHW]

In a message dated 9/13/00 4:27:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

<< Well this might be nice if nations intervened in other countries when bad
 >things are done and were able to stop the bad things happenings.
 
 When socialist nations did intervene, imperialist nations did not 
 appreciate such interventions at all.  Many intellectuals -- 
 including many leftists -- in the West condemned the Soviet 
 intervention in Afghanistan, though the Soviets were backing the side 
 of modernizers -- whatever faults you may find in them -- against the 
 forces of feudal reaction supported by the CIA.  It is not just 
 military interventions by socialist nations that courted the wrath of 
 imperialists.  The presence of Cuban engineers & construction workers 
 in Grenada was used as an excuse for the U.S. invasion of Grenada. 
 The list is endless.
  >>

Yoshie's point is that what you count as "bad thing" depends on where you 
stand. Imperialist nations will (and do) intervene when things like popular 
resistance threaten their domination, because that's what they see as bad. 
--jks

Re: Re: Re: dulce decorum

[JKSCHW]

In a message dated 9/13/00 11:51:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

<< I know: I was trying to say "sweet decorum," though perhaps Justin will 
 want to reenact the scene from "Monty Python's Life of Brian," in which the 
 Roman guard lectures Brian on the poor Latin grammar of his anti-Roman 
 graffiti and then makes him write the correct version 100 times on the 
 wall. It's a great scene. >>

Remember the scene in Canadian Bacon where the American "invaders" are cited 
by a Canadian traffic cop for not having their F*ck Canada graffiti on their 
truck in French as well as English? --jks

Re: Re: Prayin' for a warm Winter

[Joanna Sheldon]

We'd love to help, down here, by keeping our air conditioners cranked up
all summer long (October to April) but that might make things worse...  

Jo


At 14:14 13-09-00 , you wrote:
>Re: Prayin' for a warm Winter
>
>luckily, global warming will provide...
>;-)
>
>Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
> 

Announcement: MARXISM 2000 Conference -- NEXT WEEK

[Stephen Cullenberg]

MARXISM 2000 -- the 4th International Gala Conference hosted by
Rethinking Marxism -- is finally here. Next week, 21-24 September,
over 1,000 people will gather at UMass-Amherst from all continents
(except Antarctica) to celebrate the richness of contemporary Marxism in
all its varieties in over 190 panels, plenaries, film and video
presentations and performances.

As you can see from the partial list of participants, the Conference
promises to be lively and fun. On behalf of Rethinking Marxism,
and the conference organizing committee, I truly hope you can attend.


Please circulate this announcement to all other interested colleagues and
listservs. Thanks! 

Steve Cullenberg



RETHINKING
MARXISM announces its fourth 
International Gala Conference 

MARXISM 2000 

21-24 September (Thursday-Sunday) 2000 
University of Massachusetts at Amherst 
http://www.nd.edu/~remarx/Marxism2000/




JOIN WITH Robert Albritton, Jack Amariglio, Giovanni Arrighi, Enid Arvidson, Margot Backus, Drucilla Barker, Ursula Biemann, Carole Biewener, Shannon Bell, John Beverley, Roy Bhaskar, Jacques Bidet, Roland Boer, Derek Boothman, Paul Burkett, Joseph Buttigieg, Antonio Callari, John Cammett, S. Charusheela, Stephen Cullenberg, Jamie Owen Daniel, Angela Davis, Mike Davis, Michael Denning, Gerard Dumenil, Gregory Elliot, Daniel Faber, Susan Feiner, Barbara Foley, Benedetto Fontana, John Foster, Harriet Fraad, Carl Freedman, Norman Geras, Katherine Gibson, Martha Gimenez, Jill Godmilow, Julie Graham, Michael Hardt, Barbara Harlow, David Harvey, Inez Hedges, Rosemary Hennessy, Peter Hitchcock, Noel Ignatiev, Susan Jahoda, Miranda Joseph, Arjo Klamer, Joel Kovel, Amitava Kumar, Lauren Langman, Neil Larsen, Paul LeBlanc, Richard Levins, Dominique Levy, Richard Lichtman, David Lloyd, Fred Lonidier, Domenico Losurdo, Lisa Lowe,  Julian Markels, Randy Martin, David McNally, William Milberg, Warren Montag, Kenneth Mostern, Meera Nanda, Richard Ohmann, Bertell Ollman, Andrew Parker, Cindy Patton, Robert Pollin, Vijay Prashad, Walid Raad, Paula Rabinowitz, R. Radkrishnana, Stephen Resnick, John Roche, Frank Rosengarten, David Ruccio, Hasana Sharp, David Shumway, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Kenneth Surin, Darko Suvin, Victor Wallis, Evan Watkins, John Weeks, Richard Wolff, and many others in celebrating the richness of contemporary Marxism and other liberation communities. 

Plenary sessions include: 
(Re)Claiming Utopia with Norman Geras, JK Gibson-Graham, and Lisa Lowe; 
Global (Dis)Orders with David Harvey, David Ruccio, and Gayatri Spivak; 
(Re)Turns to Class with Angela Davis and Mike Davis. 

Film and Video sessions with showings and discussions with film makers, including:  Ursula Biemann, Barton Byg, Jill Godmilow, Tami Gold, Nina Huntemann, Sut Jhally, Amitava Kumar, Walid Raad, and Matt Soar. 

Performance Art by Susan Kleckner and Kate Wilson. 

There will also be a performance of Howard Zinn's nationally acclaimed play, Marx in Soho, with Brian Jones. 


PURPOSE: The editors of RETHINKING MARXISM intend "Marxism 2000" to explore and engender fresh insights and hopes, struggles and pleasures, and to (re)claim utopian visions for just and humane global alternatives. As a new millennium dawns, familiar specters have dematerialized and capital is becoming increasingly global. New visions and analyses beg for articulation. It is time to take stock and move Marxism's future forward. 

The prior three conferences, each attended by over one thousand persons from across the globe, brought together a variety of Marxian and other liberation communities to discuss, debate, and strategize about diverse theoretical and political concerns (for details, see http://www.nd.edu/~remarx/conferences/main.html ): 

*In 1989, "Marxism Now: Traditions and Difference" created a forum where new, heterogeneous directions in Marxism and the Left could be debated after the breakup of orthodoxy. 

*In 1992, "Marxism in the New World Order: Crises and Possibilities" confronted directly the challenges -- theoretical, organizational, and spiritual -- which faced the Left and Marxism as the new millennium neared. 

*In 1996, "Politics and Languages of Contemporary Marxism" continued the dialogue to open creative new spaces for political, cultural and scholarly interventions in the face of global restructuring of social relations. 



SCHEDULE: Please visit our website for the full, detailed schedule of film and video panels, art and performance panels, plenary sessions, concurrent sessions, live theater and music. http://www.nd.edu/~remarx/Marxism2000/schedule.html. 

Thursday, September 21 

10:00 am-5:00 pm:  Vendor Displays 
11:00 am: Registration Desk Opens 
1:00 pm-3:00 pm: Concurrent Sessions A 
3:30 pm-5:00 pm: Concurrent Sessions B 
5:00 pm: Dinner (in local restaurants) 
7:30 pm: Plenary Session -- (Re)Claiming Utopia 
9:30 pm: Cash Bar and Music 


Friday, September 22 

9:00 am-5:00 pm:  Vendor Displays 
9:30 am-11:30 am: Concurrent Sessions C 
11:3

Brit Unions foaming at the mouth on productivity..

[Lisa & Ian Murray]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/0,6957,,00.html

  Brown runs into a barrage of criticism from unions

Seamus Milne and David Gow
Wednesday September 13, 2000

Union leaders yesterday lashed out at Gordon Brown for failing to act over
"the disaster" overtaking British manufacturing and what one called "idiotic
ideas" about working harder and "half-baked lectures about effort."
As the Chancellor sat on the TUC conference podium GMB general union leader
John Edmonds hit back at yesterday's report of Mr Browns call for a national
productivity drive and told him: "Gordon, you just have to do something
about the monetary policy committee" of the Bank of England.

The committees decision about interest rates lay behind the high pound's
impact on manufacturing jobs, he declared: "It should spend less time
fretting about inflation and more time responding to the needs of producers
and ex porters".

"Why cannot we have at least one member who works in manufacturing industry,
or knows about manufacturing industry, or at least lives in a town that
understands the importance of manufacturing industry." He asked, demanding
treasury action to reduce the value of sterling.

Before Mr Brown rose to address the congress, Mr Edmonds said he had read in
the papers - a clear reference to the chancellor's trailed productivity
appeal - that one solution to the manufacturing crisis was that British
workers should work harder.

The union leader said that whoever thought up "these idiotic ideas" should
go and see women workers operating sewing machines on piece rate, who were
desperate to increase their productivity but instead face the sack.

He was echoed by Sir Ken Jackson, general secretary Amalgamated Engineering
& Electrical Union, who told Mr Brown that the over-valued pound was
"pricing British manufacturing out of the market, wiping out productivity
gains overnight and prevent the investment needed to compete in the Global
Economy."

The Chancellor, who used his speech to insist that there would be no
"short-term lurches" in tax policy in response to current protests, was at
pain to defuse union criticism by emphasising that he understood their
concerns about the exchange rate and manufacturing and by down playing his
trailed demands for wage restraint.

"We will continue to do more to support manufacturing." He pledged, wooing
his audience with the prize of "full employment sustained for a generation,"
built on growth and pro ductivity.

He appealed to unions and employers to work together with government to
close the productivity gap with Britain's competitors, arguing that this was
the foundation on which the country could "achieve full employment, abolish
child and pensioner poverty, build world class public services in education
and health."

But there could be "no short -term lurches in spending policy or tax policy,
no irresponsible spending increases or inflationary pay rises that put youth
jobs at risk, no quick fixes or soft options, that would put long-term
stability, public services and our policy for full employment at risk."

Mr Brown used his first speech as chancellor to the TUC to praise the
traditions and achievements of the labour movement, hailing the trade union
pioneers as "idealists not dreamers" who "knew it is easier to take your own
share that fight for everyone to have a fair share".

But his reiteration of plans for an increase in the minimum wage and promise
the ensure that pensioners gained more from Britain's rising prosperity left
TUC delegates demanding more details.

Union leaders were far less critical after they had heard the chancellor,
but never the less wanted to know more. Rodney Bickerstaffe, leader of the
public service union Unison, said he would have like to have heard more
about what the chancellor planned to do about public sector pay and union
concerns about the creeping privatisation of public services and need to
restore the pension-earning link.

Mr Edmunds said he hoped Mr Brown remarks about training opened the way for
legally binding obligations on employers to invest in skills, but ruled out
the chancellors suggestion that unions might move away from annual pay
bargaining to promote economic stability.

Colombia top Union killer again...

[Lisa & Ian Murray]

[full article http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/FIN/union.2.html ]

Paris, Thursday, September 14, 2000
Colombia Tops Unions' Peril List

The Associated Press

GENEVA - At least half of the more than 140 union members who disappeared or
were killed last year came from Colombia, making it the world's most
dangerous place for organized labor, a labor group said Wednesday.
In its annual survey of violations of union rights, the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions found that 676 death threats were issued
against Colombian union members last year. At least 69 were killed, down
from 91 the previous year, and 22 were kidnapped.

Bill Jordan, general secretary of the confederation, cited ''ruthless
repression in Latin America, attacks and interference in Asia, arrests and
imprisonment in Africa, severe restrictions and nonpayment of wages in
Eastern Europe and a growing trend to union-busting in industrialized
countries.''

The report said 90 union members were killed in Latin America last year. The
region also accounted for 70 percent of the 3,000 arrested worldwide for
union activity. More than 1,500 union members worldwide were injured or
tortured, and at least 5,800 were harassed because of ''legitimate trade
union activities,'' the report said. It added that 12,000 were fired because
of union activity.

The survey said 37 unionists died during strikes in Asia and the Pacific. It
also found high levels of government interference in Eastern Europe. Across
Europe, seven unionists were killed, four of them in Russia, the agency
said. The group has affiliates in 145 countries representing more than 123
million workers.

Kakistocracy update...

[Lisa & Ian Murray]

[full article at http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/IN/beijing.2.html ]



Paris, Thursday, September 14, 2000
Secret Trials of Chinese Officials Begin

Agence France-Presse

XIAMEN, China - Trials in the biggest corruption scandal in Communist
China's history opened Wednesday with senior officials facing the death
penalty for taking bribes and kickbacks in a multibillion-dollar smuggling
scam.
Court officials in the coastal cities of Xiamen, Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Putian
and Zhangzhou in the southern province of Fujian confirmed that trials
linked to the scandal had opened.

But a veil of secrecy has been drawn over proceedings and officials refused
to give details about defendants or charges, and they also declined to say
exactly how many people would face trial.

The police imposed heavy security around the Xiamen People's Intermediate
Court, blocking all roads around the building and turning away anyone
without an official pass.

The scandal is centered around the Hong Kong-based YanHua (Farewell) Group,
which allegedly operated a smuggling web out of the port of Xiamen by
greasing the palms of police, customs and Communist Party officials.

YanHua, run by Lai Changqing, a businessman, is alleged to have smuggled
more than $10 billion worth of diesel fuel, tobacco, cigarettes, rubber and
other products over a decade.

Hong Kong press reports have implicated between 200 and 600 government
officials, including the families of some of China's most senior leaders.

President Jiang Zemin has ordered an all-out war on corruption within the
Communist Party, and in the latest high-profile case Cheng Kejie, a vice
chairman of Parliament, was sentenced to death in July for taking nearly $5
million in bribes.

But critics say Mr. Jiang has stopped investigations reaching into the top
echelon of the party and the most senior officials linked to the Xiamen scam
are not expected to stand trial.

The Beijing Youth Daily said this week that about 10 officials would be
sentenced to death for accepting 5 million yuan ($600,000) each in bribes

Previous media reports have said that at least four officials will face the
death penalty for receiving bribes exceeding $12 million. They include the
former Xiamen customs head, Yang Qianxian, and a former provincial deputy
director of police, Zhuang Rushun.

Also allegedly implicated are the deputy head of Xiamen's public security
department, the head of state security in Xiamen and the city's deputy
Communist Party secretary.

Xiamen's new vice mayor, Chen Conghui, declined to give details of the
trials, but insisted the city was shaking off its reputation as a center of
corruption.

''One thing I would like to stress is that Xiamen is not relying on
smuggling to get rich,'' he said. ''If you cut off a branch infected with
insects the health of the whole tree improves.''

UK Petrol tax revolt

[Chris Burford]

  We expected networks to deliver more protests against global capitalism, 
of the sort that have just taken place in Melbourne - Congratulations!

But there are special reasons why networks have produced the cascade of 
positive feedback leading to the petrol tax revolt in Britain.

The petrol blockade in Britain has developed as suddenly as the national 
mourning over Diana, promoted by 24 hour news services. It has also been 
lubricated by the new networking possiblilities of e-mail, fax, mobile 
phones. It has a contagious sense of populist power against the powers that 
be. Blair is now on the wrong side of that public perception.

The water had been tested with a Dump the Pump campaign earlier this year 
calling on people to boycott garages on Mondays. That got nowhere but lay 
the seeds of the idea. The techniques were ignited in Britain from 
frustration about French blockades and stories of Britons getting held up.

The class base of the activists are small bourgeois and petty bourgeois 
severely squeezed in the finance capitalist dominated economy, or at the 
very least resentful at not being able to participate in the relative boom 
in Britain. They are small farmers, or self employed haulage contractors or 
employers of half a dozen to a dozen lorries. The are practising leaderless 
resistance and therefore cannot be stopped by the laws that the Thatcher 
government introduced and Blair maintained, against secondary picketing by 
formal organisations. The drivers of the petrol tankers are sympathetic and 
agree at every opportunity not to cross the picket lines.

The Trades Union Congress has deplored the risk to jobs.

By contrast the revolt against the poll tax leading up to 1989 was 
spearheaded by the lumpen proletariat, living on benefits and able to 
organise and sacrifice their liberty over several years.

The current petrol blockade is an object lesson in how finely 
interdependent a modern economy is for the circulation of goods and 
services. Just an interruption of a few days has led one of the biggest 
supermarket chains to declare that it will be out of food in seven to 10 
days - a symptom of the "just-in-time" system of miniminsing circulating 
capital by reducing unnecessary stock levels.

The high petrol tax in Britain was started by the Conservative chancellor 
Lamont, and added to with the "fuel escalator" of Ken Clarke. The Labour 
government had already stepped back from continuing the latter. But in the 
competition with the Conservatives to cut income tax, they have relied more 
an more on indirect taxes. This has led the ratio of tax paid on petrol 
that is startlingly high.

Western European governments however cannot immediately lower taxes on 
petrol just because OPEC countries are increasing the price. This would 
come close to a direct transfer of resources from western European 
governments to oil producing countries to subsidise their share in the 
energy market.

The overall picture of the world economy is that oil is becoming a rate 
limiting factor for the Western European countries which has triggered a 
dangerous tax revolt developing at non-linear speed. It will damage their 
economies and make them less resilient compared to that of the USA, and 
less able to protect themselves from rising oil prices in the future.

It is a popular revolt led by special sections of the petty bourgeoisie and 
bourgeoisie. In that respect it is poujadist. There is also the sense that 
the Conservative Party has been so weak that it does not present an 
effective outlet for protest, so as in France the central government is 
seen as massively strong and requiring a revolt of this nature to stop its 
intentions.

The Labour government cannot negotiate with the revolt because the revolt 
is leaderless. The government's hands are also tied by the delicate pattern 
of figures of gross domestic product, gross tax receipts, and inflation 
rate. The petrol blockade is so deflationary that to keep the balance it 
probably now needs to release a sum of money equivalent to the perceived 
excessive petrol taxes anyway. However it cannot be seen just to give into 
them.

A victory for democracy and direct action? Yes.

But reactionary in the most literal sense of the word, spearheaded by 
reactionary sectors of the economy, and without a strategy for the economic 
future of Britain in a world in which the environment is already becoming 
an obvious limiting factor.

Chris Burford

London

RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Economics and Literature

[Max Sawicky]

yes.  Eileen publishes a ton in journals.
Peter was offered (and took) a position at Michigan State
(I think) when he wasn't even on the academic market.
Of course, it was in an IR department. Not "econ."

mbs


Does that work win the respect of "real" economists?

>
> I beg your pardon but our industrial relations
> people -- Eileen Appelbaum and Peter Berg --
> have visited many factories, interviewing workers
> and collecting data, for their research on workplace
> organization.
>
> mbs
>
>
> Modern sociologists (like Michael Burawoy) visit factories. Economists
> don't do so, and in fact sneer at sociologists as being unscientific
louts.
> . . .
>
>


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

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

Re: Thatcher and nationalism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>>Well this might be nice if nations intervened in other countries when bad
>>>things are done and were able to stop the bad things happening...
>>
>>It was called World War II...
>
>Yeah, and after the war, the U.S. assimilated most of the Nazi 
>intelligence apparatus. They had such excellent files on the 
>Russkis, you know.
>
>Doug

In the East, even _before_ the WWII was over, Western imperialists 
were already fighting, together with the Japanese, against the 
Communists:

*   VJ Day: Remembering the Pacific War

Stephen R. Shalom


...As early as February 1944, the Department of State had endorsed 
the idea that the East Indies should be given back to the 
Netherlands.114 The Indonesian people, however, were not inclined to 
accept continued colonial rule, so when British troops arrived -- 
designated by Washington as responsible for disarming the Japanese 
forces there -- they found an armed independence movement. Journalist 
Harold Isaacs described how the British dealt with this problem:

Japanese troops, kept under arms, were ordered into action against 
the insurgents. At Semarang and Bandung, where bitter battles were 
fought to take those cities away from the Indonesians, Japanese 
infantry and tanks carried the main brunt. In his official report on 
the fighting at Semarang at the end of November, the local British 
commander ... gave the late enemy his enthusiastic accolade: "The 
Japanese were magnificent!" he wired.115

The British also used their own forces against the Indonesians. The 
latter appealed to the United States that the British were using U.S. 
weapons and equipment against them. "Washington promptly asked the 
British if they would not please remove the American insignia and the 
initials 'USA' from their fighting gear," Isaacs reported.116

When the Dutch returned, they were armed with weapons purchased with 
U.S. financial aid. The United Nations worked out a compromise 
between the Indonesian nationalists and the Dutch, but the Dutch 
refused to abide by it and Washington failed to enforce its 
implementation. In defiance of the UN, the Dutch imposed a strict 
economic blockade on Indonesia, cutting off supplies of food and 
medicine and causing great suffering. Then, in 1948, Indonesian 
leftists (with no backing from Moscow) tried to take power and when 
Sukarno and the other moderate nationalists crushed them, Washington 
did some rethinking. Because Sukarno seemed firmly anti-communist, 
and to forestall any further radicalization of Indonesian 
nationalism, the United States now pressed the Netherlands to settle. 
But Washington did support the Dutch in their demand that Indonesia 
shoulder the entire burden of its internal debt, 42% of which had 
been incurred by Dutch military operations to prevent Indonesian 
independence.117 Over the next decade independent Indonesia would be 
subject to a massive U.S. campaign of subversion.118

In Indochina, too, Japanese troops and U.S. arms were used to try to 
restore colonial rule over a nationalist movement that was prepared 
to declare independence. When the British landed in Vietnam, the 
first thing they did was free the French forces who had been 
imprisoned by the Japanese. Then, the British and French, with 
Japanese troops assisting, went out to crush the Vietnamese.119 A 
British spokesperson had the "highest praise" for the cooperation 
shown by the Japanese commander. Eight weeks after the British 
arrived, fewer than 5% of Japanese troops had been disarmed.120

Because the nationalists in Vietnam were communist led, the United 
States did not push the French to agree to independence. Over the 
next eight years, the French war to reassert its colonial rule over 
Indochina would be four- fifths funded by Washington. Thus, even 
though it had been the Japanese advance into Indochina that 
precipitated U.S. sanctions in 1940-41, ultimately leading to the 
Pacific War, the self-determination of the people of Indochina was of 
no consequence to the United States. Indeed, as the next two decades 
would show, the very lives of the people of Indochina mattered little 
to U.S. policy makers.

In the Philippines, the bulk of the pre-war elite had collaborated 
with the Japanese, while many Filipinos fought in guerrilla units 
against the Japanese occupation. Some of these guerrillas were 
American led, but the largest grouping was the left-wing Hukbalahap 
(Huks) which drew its strength from the radicalized peasantry of 
Central Luzon. When U.S. troops reconquered the islands, they 
re-installed the old elite and secured from them vast military bases 
and economic privileges. In return, the elite obtained preferential 
access to the U.S. market and military aid to help them reassert 
their control in the countryside against the Huks.121

Matters were no better in East Asia. Korea had been a Japanese colony 
since the early years of the century and the popular desire there for 
independence was 

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2000:  

> Today's News Release:  "U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes - August
> 2000" indicates that the U.S. Import Price Index rose 0.2 percent in
> August.  The increase was attributable to a rise in both petroleum and
> nonpetroleum import prices.  The Export Price Index decreased 0.3 percent
> in August, following declines of 0.1 percent in each of the previous 2
> months.
> 
For much of the past decade, an extraordinary windfall in the form of cheap
oil has helped fuel prosperity in the United States, subsidized Europe's
social welfare programs, and helped much of Asia recover quickly from
financial meltdown.  But as crude oil prices continue their dizzying ascent
-- at nearly $35 a barrel, they have more than tripled in less than 2 years
-- many economists believe the good times may be ending (William Drozdiak in
an article in The Washington Post, page 1, datelined Vienna).

> Policymakers and top private economists predict that the seemingly nonstop
> pace of technological innovation related to the Internet has the potential
> for providing the fuel to keep the U.S. economy expanding for the
> indefinite future. Persistently high energy prices pose a threat to core
> inflation, but oil price surge should be a short-term development that
> will not hamper the expansion, officials said as they scan the horizon for
> factors that might derail the expansion.  Martin Baily, chairman of the
> President's Council of Economic Advisers, tells a session of the National
> Association for Business Economics that he believes strong demand from
> traditional businesses will support continued investment in computer
> software and hardware that is produced by new economy industries (Daily
> Labor Report, page A-12).
> 
U.S. per-capita income grew 4.5 percent last year, led by gains in
Massachusetts and four Western states, the Commerce Department reports.  The
increase brought U.S. income up to $28,542 from a revised $27,322 last year.
In 1998, income grew by 5.6 percent (Daily Labor Report, page D-1).

Although the Federal Government says poverty in New York City officially
ends at $14,150 for a household of three, many residents have found that
getting by takes tends of thousands of dollars more, says Nina Bernstein,
writing in The New York Times (page A27).  She is quoting from a study to be
released today by the Women's Center for Education and Career Advancement,
the New York Community Trust, and the United Way of New York City.

> New phenomenon of "high productivity poverty" is growing in the global
> economy and is posing a threat to workers both in this country and abroad,
> a veteran labor specialist and university president tells the
> International Association of Machinists convention delegates.  He urged
> delegates to forge global ties and cooperate in efforts aimed toward
> achieving minimum international standards of workers' rights (Daily Labor
> Report, page C-1).
> 
> Acknowledging that its traditional prescriptions of balanced budgets,
> sound currency and free trade have failed to significantly reduce poverty
> around the world, the World Bank yesterday called for a fresh approach
> that puts equal emphasis on giving the poor more power and more income
> security in times of crisis.  The publication of the bank's World Bank
> yesterday called for a fresh approach that puts equal emphasis on giving
> the poor more power and more income security in times of crisis.  The
> publication of the bank's world Development Report represents a
> significant dissent from the widely held consensus among economists that
> the best way to alleviate poverty is to foster economic growth -- and the
> only way to foster growth is through free and open markets.  A chart
> accompanying the article indicates that despite a decade of economic
> growth, the percentage of people living on less than $1 a day has declined
> only modestly -- if at all -- in many regions of the world (The Washington
> Post, page E1).
> __The World Bank, frequently accused by outsiders of favoring corporate
> and elite interests in developing nations, issued a study concluding that
> the antipoverty programs won't help much unless they secure more political
> power for the poor themselves. The bank, owned by the U.S. and 180 other
> nations, found that economic growth alone won't alleviate global poverty
> in part because political and economic systems favor the rich over the
> poor, and the powerful over the powerless.  Facilitating "the empowerment
> of poor people -- by making state and social institutions more responsive
> to them -- is also key to reducing poverty," the report said (The Wall
> Street Journal, page A2).
> __Globalization has generated unprecedented wealth, but left nearly half
> of humanity living on less than $2 a day, the World Bank says.  The bank,
> in a massive study of poverty, noted the "extraordinarily unequal" gains
> from globalization and concluded

Computers and Productivity musings

[enilsson]

The 'true' impact of growth rate of the computer sector on the growth rate of 
the whole economy is impossible to measure. 

The reason has to do with how real series (real GDP, real compensation, etc) 
are generated.

Suppose you have 2 sectors in the economy: computers and food. Suppose you 
select 1990 as your “base year.” Among other things, this means that you 
determine the “size” of the two sectors according to the relative spending on 
the two items. Suppose that in 1990, then, 10 percent of spending went to 
computers and 90 percent went to food. The computer sector is 10% of the 
economy while food is 90% of the economy.

The growth rate of the economy would then be 10% times Cg plus 90% times Fg, 
where Cg and Fg are the growth rates in computers and food.

Let’s say that nominal spending remains the same in the two sectors between 
1990 and 2000. (BEA data seems to suggest that nominal spending on computers 
was fairly constant between these years, but this seems odd to me). 

Suppose also that productivity/quality advances in computer is such that 
the “true” size of the computer sector is now 50% of the economy and food has 
fallen to 50%. 

The new productivity rate for the whole economy is now: 50% times Cg plus 50% 
times Fg. The computer sector’s higher growth rate now plays a greater role in 
boosting the growth rate of the whole economy.

Putting hypothetical numbers into the above:

Suppose the computer sector productivity is always 10% and that in food is 
always 2%

In 1990 the economy-wide productivity will be:
10% times 10% plus 90% times 2% = 2.8%

But in 2000 the growth rate of the whole economy will be larger because the 
computer sector has grown in importance and its growth rate is now weighted 
more:

In 2000 the economy-wide productivity will be:
50% times 10% plus 50% times 2% = 6.0%. 

That is, the growth rate has sped up not because any individual industry become 
more productivity but simply because the more productivity industry grew in 
relative importance.

Now let’s say that we decide to use 2000 as the base year. Because nominal 
spending on computers and on food in 2000 is the same as in 1990 (I assumed 
this above), the weights for the two sectors is now: computer = 10% and food = 
90%. 

The new economy-wide growth rate is, then: 
10% times 10% plus 90% times 2% = 2.8%.

The growth rate has fallen back to 1990 levels because the 2000 and 1990 
spending levels were the same! It seems the computer industry just ain't as 
important as it once was when 1990 was used as the base year.

This example shows that the impact of the computer industry on economy-wide 
productivity spends on the base year chosen. Those close to today the base year 
is, the smaller the role computer productivity has on the economy-wide level fo 
productivity.

Conclusion: take with a grain of salt any estimate of economy-wide productivity 
growth. Such a number depends on the nominal spending within the different 
sectors in the base year chosen.

Similar sort of things happen with the construction of price indexes and in the 
construction of most any real series with more than a single component.

Eric

Re: Re: Women & Industrialization (was Re: capitalist patriarchy)

[Eugene Coyle]

Thanks, Yoshie, for your posts, including this one:

Gene Coyle

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> Jim Heartfield wrote:
>
> >In message , Yoshie Furuhashi
> ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> > >Typical faces of industrial workers changed from female & colored to
> > >male & white to female & colored.  The prevalence of the nuclear
> > >family idealized by conservatives now -- male breadwinner, female
> > >housewife, & biological children -- was merely a blip in history that
> > >coincided with the post-WW2 economic boom (say, from the Korean War
> > >to the Vietnam War & oil shock).
> >
> >Certainly the evidence in the UK appears to be that the family wage has
> >been abolished, and the nuclear family itself is difficult to sustain in
> >its absence. Having more or less campaigned for the abolition of the
> >family for twenty years I ought to be celebrating, but the conditions
> >under which families are under attack - which is to say the triumph of
> >capitalism over organised labour - don't lend themselves to a positive
> >outcome.
> >
> >In the first instance, women have been drawn into the labour market in
> >equal numbers but on unequal terms (predominantly on part time pay). At
> >the same time men have systematically lost high-paying jobs. High
> >divorce rates indicate that marriage for life is pretty unsustainable
> >when, as the pundits boast 'there is no job for life'. Not that there is
> >necessarily anything wrong with a high divorce rate - except that single
> >mothers are more often impoverished and unemployed.
>
> Especially given that the virtual end of the family wage for many
> male workers was soon followed by the attacks on social programs for
> single mothers, there is no reason to simply celebrate our
> contemporary family conditions.  Writers such as Stephanie Coontz,
> Judith Stacey, etc., however, caution against nostalgia for the
> mid-twentieth-century heyday of the proverbial nuclear family
> (enabled by the _exceptional_ material & ideological conditions of
> the post-WW2 economic boom, the Cold War, & social democratic
> preemptive strike against socialism).  Coontz, for instance, writes
> in "Working-Class Families, 1870-1890," _American Families: A
> Multicultural Reader_, NY: Routledge, 1999:
>
> *   Adopting domesticity [for the working-class] was in some
> ways, then, a defensive maneuver with long-run disadvantages [Yoshie:
> notice Coontz's subtle formulation here].  It was a response partly
> to the deterioration of working conditions for women, partly to the
> threat of industrialization to skilled craftsmen, and partly to the
> failure of middle-class women to address the special needs of women
> workers.  As [Martha] May [in "Bread Before Roses: American
> Workingmen, Labor Unions and the Family Wage," in Ruth Milkman, ed.
> _Women, Work and Protest_, Boston, 1985] points out, 'the family-wage
> ultimately...worked against the interests of working-class men, women
> and families, by accepting and deepening a sexual double standard in
> the labor market.'  The double standard allowed the state to
> forestall union demands by granting charity to women without
> 'providers' and employers in order to hold down women's wages on the
> grounds that they worked for 'pin money.'  It also gave some women an
> incentive to act as strikebreakers or non-union workers.  Finally,
> the double standard closed off opportunities to explore alternative
> family and gender roles within the industrial working-class that
> might have strengthened working-class solidarity [a line of thinking
> suggested earlier by Alexandra Kollontai].  Indeed, by the early
> twentieth century,
>
> Middle-class social reformers and activists came to embrace the
> family wage as a means of restoring social stability, while some
> employers recognized its possibilities as a means to control and
> divide labor.  At the same time, within the ranks of organized labor,
> the family wage increasingly became a defense of gender privilege.
> Defense of gender privilege, in turn, was closely connected to a
> craft exclusiveness that hampered male organizing as well as female
> [just as white privilege was]. [36]
>
> [36]  May, 'Bread Before Roses,' pp. 7, 8; Elizabeth Jameson,
> 'Imperfect Unions: Class and Gender in Cripple Creek, 1894-1904,' in
> Cantor and Laurie, _Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker_; Andrew Dawson,
> 'The parameters of Class Consciousness: The Social Outlook of the
> Skilled Worker, 1890-1920,' in Hoerder, _American Labor and
> Immigration History_.   *
>
> Organized labor to a certain extent has already learned this
> historical lesson -- hence its advocacy of the "living wage," not
> "family wage," I believe.  Also, from another direction, "civil
> unions," "gay marriages," and finally in the Netherlands the right of
> non-heterosexuals to enjoy the full benefits of marriages are
> changing the meanings of the word "family" a great deal to the
> chagrin o

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thatcher and nationalism

[Doug Henwood]

Brad De Long wrote:

>>Well this might be nice if nations intervened in other countries when bad
>>things are done and were able to stop the bad things happening...
>
>It was called World War II...

Yeah, and after the war, the U.S. assimilated most of the Nazi 
intelligence apparatus. They had such excellent files on the Russkis, 
you know.

Doug

RE: Those questionable productivity numbers

[enilsson]

This is primarily to Doug.

I was going to respond to Doug's question of the other day but I'm still daddy 
at home and don't have Doug's message. But, I'll give a shot at it anyway.

The question was something like why can't one compare a change in the absolute 
value of a nominal variable with the change in the absolute value of a real 
variable.

I'm not sure that my answer is understandable but this is due to a lack of 
clarity on my part rather than the reader's problem.

First, one can do this and it might say something interesting, like Doug's 
observation linking changes in nominal computer spending with real computer 
spending.

Second, this comparision might be very misleading.

Real series are not intended to be used in comparisions of LEVELS but for 
comparisons in PERCENTAGE changes. 

The level of a real series depends on the year that is used to provide the base 
year prices. If, say, the BEA has used 1999 as the base year then 1999 real and 
nominal computer spending would have equalled. In this case, the real growth in 
computer spending would have been very close to the nominal increase and not 
the big differences seen in the actual numbers.

That is, the size of the growth of the real variable depends on the base year 
chosen which is arbitrary. A change in the base year prices will not, however, 
lead to a change in the percentage growth in the real variable.

(The details are really more complicated because changing the base year also 
changes the relative importance of different sectors of the economy, etc).

The effect of a given year's increase in nominal spending on computers on real 
spending on computers depends on the base year used to generate the real values.

The big difference in the nominal spending values on computers and the real 
spending on computers is really a measure that the computer sector is "really 
larger" today than the nominal values give it credit for.

Actually this last point might be important. But I'll add to this in my next 
message. And, maybe I'll be more coherent.

Eric

Re: Re: Thatcher and nationalism

[Jim Devine]

Yoshie writes:
>When socialist nations did intervene, imperialist nations did not 
>appreciate such interventions at all.  Many intellectuals -- including 
>many leftists -- in the West condemned the Soviet intervention in 
>Afghanistan, though the Soviets were backing the side of modernizers -- 
>whatever faults you may find in them -- against the forces of feudal 
>reaction supported by the CIA.  It is not just military interventions by 
>socialist nations that courted the wrath of imperialists.  The presence of 
>Cuban engineers & construction workers in Grenada was used as an excuse 
>for the U.S. invasion of Grenada. The list is endless.

You don't understand: when the bad guys (Cuba, Iraq, etc.) do things, it's 
bad, but when the good guys (us) do things, it's good. It may seem that we 
are using the same methods, but our cause is just -- since we're fighting 
for freedom -- and you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs...

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

"Value, Price, and Profit (Abridged)" by K. Marx: Now available for student/scholar use

[Paul Zarembka]

An abridged version of "Value, Price, and Profit", by Karl Marx is now at

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka/Marx.htm

with the publisher's permission and includes a new Preface.  The abstract
reads: 

"Marx's 1865 lectures offer an easily accessible summary of his theory,
addressed to an English-speaking audience.  However, one weakness
preventing common usage (including classroom use) is its dialogue in the
first twenty pages with one John Weston.  This abridged version stays with
the exact words used by Marx, while eliminating almost all reference to
the dialogue with Weston.  The currency of that time in its division into
three units is also decimalized into its modern form.  The result is more
readable and modern, yet completely faithful to Marx's presentation."

Paul Zarembka

***
Paul Zarembka, editor, RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY at
 http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka

Re: Re: Re: Re: Thatcher and nationalism

[Brad De Long]

>Well this might be nice if nations intervened in other countries when bad
>things are done and were able to stop the bad things happening...

It was called World War II...

Re: Thatcher and nationalism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Ken Hanley wrote:

>Well this might be nice if nations intervened in other countries when bad
>things are done and were able to stop the bad things happenings.

When socialist nations did intervene, imperialist nations did not 
appreciate such interventions at all.  Many intellectuals -- 
including many leftists -- in the West condemned the Soviet 
intervention in Afghanistan, though the Soviets were backing the side 
of modernizers -- whatever faults you may find in them -- against the 
forces of feudal reaction supported by the CIA.  It is not just 
military interventions by socialist nations that courted the wrath of 
imperialists.  The presence of Cuban engineers & construction workers 
in Grenada was used as an excuse for the U.S. invasion of Grenada. 
The list is endless.

Yoshie

Re: Women & Industrialization (was Re: capitalist patriarchy)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Jim Heartfield wrote:

>In message , Yoshie Furuhashi
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> >Typical faces of industrial workers changed from female & colored to
> >male & white to female & colored.  The prevalence of the nuclear
> >family idealized by conservatives now -- male breadwinner, female
> >housewife, & biological children -- was merely a blip in history that
> >coincided with the post-WW2 economic boom (say, from the Korean War
> >to the Vietnam War & oil shock).
>
>Certainly the evidence in the UK appears to be that the family wage has
>been abolished, and the nuclear family itself is difficult to sustain in
>its absence. Having more or less campaigned for the abolition of the
>family for twenty years I ought to be celebrating, but the conditions
>under which families are under attack - which is to say the triumph of
>capitalism over organised labour - don't lend themselves to a positive
>outcome.
>
>In the first instance, women have been drawn into the labour market in
>equal numbers but on unequal terms (predominantly on part time pay). At
>the same time men have systematically lost high-paying jobs. High
>divorce rates indicate that marriage for life is pretty unsustainable
>when, as the pundits boast 'there is no job for life'. Not that there is
>necessarily anything wrong with a high divorce rate - except that single
>mothers are more often impoverished and unemployed.

Especially given that the virtual end of the family wage for many 
male workers was soon followed by the attacks on social programs for 
single mothers, there is no reason to simply celebrate our 
contemporary family conditions.  Writers such as Stephanie Coontz, 
Judith Stacey, etc., however, caution against nostalgia for the 
mid-twentieth-century heyday of the proverbial nuclear family 
(enabled by the _exceptional_ material & ideological conditions of 
the post-WW2 economic boom, the Cold War, & social democratic 
preemptive strike against socialism).  Coontz, for instance, writes 
in "Working-Class Families, 1870-1890," _American Families: A 
Multicultural Reader_, NY: Routledge, 1999:

*   Adopting domesticity [for the working-class] was in some 
ways, then, a defensive maneuver with long-run disadvantages [Yoshie: 
notice Coontz's subtle formulation here].  It was a response partly 
to the deterioration of working conditions for women, partly to the 
threat of industrialization to skilled craftsmen, and partly to the 
failure of middle-class women to address the special needs of women 
workers.  As [Martha] May [in "Bread Before Roses: American 
Workingmen, Labor Unions and the Family Wage," in Ruth Milkman, ed. 
_Women, Work and Protest_, Boston, 1985] points out, 'the family-wage 
ultimately...worked against the interests of working-class men, women 
and families, by accepting and deepening a sexual double standard in 
the labor market.'  The double standard allowed the state to 
forestall union demands by granting charity to women without 
'providers' and employers in order to hold down women's wages on the 
grounds that they worked for 'pin money.'  It also gave some women an 
incentive to act as strikebreakers or non-union workers.  Finally, 
the double standard closed off opportunities to explore alternative 
family and gender roles within the industrial working-class that 
might have strengthened working-class solidarity [a line of thinking 
suggested earlier by Alexandra Kollontai].  Indeed, by the early 
twentieth century,

Middle-class social reformers and activists came to embrace the 
family wage as a means of restoring social stability, while some 
employers recognized its possibilities as a means to control and 
divide labor.  At the same time, within the ranks of organized labor, 
the family wage increasingly became a defense of gender privilege. 
Defense of gender privilege, in turn, was closely connected to a 
craft exclusiveness that hampered male organizing as well as female 
[just as white privilege was]. [36]


[36]  May, 'Bread Before Roses,' pp. 7, 8; Elizabeth Jameson, 
'Imperfect Unions: Class and Gender in Cripple Creek, 1894-1904,' in 
Cantor and Laurie, _Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker_; Andrew Dawson, 
'The parameters of Class Consciousness: The Social Outlook of the 
Skilled Worker, 1890-1920,' in Hoerder, _American Labor and 
Immigration History_.   *

Organized labor to a certain extent has already learned this 
historical lesson -- hence its advocacy of the "living wage," not 
"family wage," I believe.  Also, from another direction, "civil 
unions," "gay marriages," and finally in the Netherlands the right of 
non-heterosexuals to enjoy the full benefits of marriages are 
changing the meanings of the word "family" a great deal to the 
chagrin of die-hard conservatives:

*   New York Times  13 September 2000

"Dutch Legislators Approve Full Marriage Rights for Gays"

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

THE HAGUE, Sept. 12 - Lawmakers in the Netherland

Re: Re: dulce decorum

[Jim Devine]

I wrote:
>>You should read more carefully. I wasn't saying that you should be filtered,

Saith Brad:
>You need to write more carefully. You were:
>
>>Néstor wrote:
(The internal structure of Argentina is not the business of interlopers 
from the imperialist world -- and interloping from alleged leftists is 
the worst of all).
>>
>>Brad writes:
>>>Positively, totally, utterly, completely nutso.

In the offending passages, I wrote:
>>Michael, isn't this the kind of abusive rhetoric which gets people 
>>expelled from pen-l. (NB: I'm not in favor of expelling anyone. If Brad 
>>doesn't clean up his act, I encourage everyone to put him on their filter 
>>lists.)

Brad now says:
>It is *nutso*. I'm calling it like I see it.
>
>So filter away...

Gee, did you miss the clause about "if Brad doesn't clean up his act"? By 
usual interpretations of English grammar, this implies that "I wasn't 
saying that you [Brad] should be filtered."

It's true that I forgot the question mark at the end of the first sentence, 
but otherwise what I wrote was quite clear.

Calling people "nutso" rather than making it clear _why_ Brad disagrees and 
how Brad would do better is below the standards of both pen-l and Brad 
deLong. I'd much rather see an explanation backing up the allegations of 
insanity than name-calling. It's true that Brad  had an explanation 
earlier, but I didn't find that sufficient, as explained below.

It's flame-bait, as seen by the results of his rhetoric, i.e., the current 
thread. (I'm surprised that no-one has chimed in to say that it's okay to 
be "nutso," BTW.)

On the insufficiency of Brad's earlier explanation: What I object to in his 
missives is first his _moralism_. Here he is, a former official of the most 
powerful (and perhaps the richest) country in the world preaching morality 
to a resident of a relatively poor country that's generally under the thumb 
of the US, without paying attention to the fact that the US doesn't live up 
to those standards, while ignoring the various factual points made by pen-l 
people. (I'm all in favor of morality, of course, but what distinguishes it 
from moralism is that the latter ignores the social and economic and 
natural constraints that prevent people from living up to moral ideals.)

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there's the application of the 
_double standard_. Brad denounces the Argentine Junta for its crimes, but 
not the US for its care and feeding of that Junta.  He denounces Argentine 
nationalism, but not the US nationalism that masquerades as internationalism.

Brad, 'tis a pity that you didn't want to read or respond to the rest of my 
message. I guess it saves on time...

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

Poem celebrating American foreign policy

[Louis Proyect]

The White Man's Burden
By Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man's burden-- 
 Send forth the best ye breed-- 
Go, bind your sons to exile 
 To serve your captives' need; 
To wait, in heavy harness, 
 On fluttered folk and wild-- 
Your new-caught sullen peoples, 
 Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden-- 
 In patience to abide, 
To veil the threat of terror 
 And check the show of pride; 
By open speech and simple, 
 An hundred times made plain, 
To seek another's profit 
 And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden-- 
 The savage wars of peace-- 
Fill full the mouth of Famine, 
 And bid the sickness cease; 
And when your goal is nearest 
 (The end for others sought) 
Watch sloth and heathen folly 
 Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden-- 
 No iron rule of kings, 
But toil of serf and sweeper-- 
 The tale of common things. 
The ports ye shall not enter, 
 The roads ye shall not tread, 
Go, make them with your living 
 And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden, 
 And reap his old reward-- 
The blame of those ye better 
 The hate of those ye guard-- 
The cry of hosts ye humour 
 (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-- 
"Why brought ye us from bondage, 
 Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden-- 
 Ye dare not stoop to less-- 
Nor call too loud on Freedom 
 To cloak your weariness. 
By all ye will or whisper, 
 By all ye leave or do, 
The silent sullen peoples 
 Shall weigh your God and you.

Take up the White Man's burden! 
 Have done with childish days-- 
The lightly-proffered laurel, 
 The easy ungrudged praise: 
Comes now, to search your manhood 
 Through all the thankless years, 
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, 
 The judgment of your peers.

---
McClure's Magazine 12 (Feb. 1899).

Louis Proyect

The Marxism mailing-list: http://www.marxmail.org

Thatcher and nationalism

[Charles Brown]

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/13/00 12:31AM >>>
>You do not explain why it is "nutso" to consider that it is no business of
>the rest of us what dictators do to their own people.
>But isn't it common among certain types of  pragmatist and "realists" to
>claim that foreign policy ought to be based upon advancing national
>interest? On this view, hardly nutso, what dictators do to their own people
>would be a nation's business only if it impacted significantly on national
>interests...

No man is an island, entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were,
As well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were.
Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; i
It tolls for thee

(((

CB: Trouble is it is easy to imagine this being sung to the "tune" of The White Man's 
Burden, when it comes from a Yankee like you.
  

Yankee go home !

Re: Re: Thatcher and nationalism

[Charles Brown]

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/13/00 12:52AM >>>
>As Doug said, you have a lot to offer the list,
>but sometimes you get on your high horse and seem to behave rather
dogmatically.

Let's look at the record:

"(The internal structure of Argentina is not the business of 
interlopers from the imperialist world -- and interloping from 
alleged leftists is the worst of all)."

I think that it is worthwhile to call this *nutso*. You think that 
calling it nutso is "dogmatic." I want to strongly assert that we are 
all one another's business: humans are social beings, after all. You 
think that such assertions are... impolite.

I think that this is really weird.




CB: Brad is playing dumb some here. He knows that the U.S. has often intervened in 
other countries in the name of international human rights principles, when their true 
motives were not to uphold international human rights standards.  As he is an 
affiliate of the U.S. government, it is not nutso to suspect Brad of ulterior 
imperialist motives in his claim to be concerned about the treatment of people by 
national "dictators". 

Re: dulce decorum

[Charles Brown]

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/13/00 12:13AM >>

Of course, 
it's quite possible that new kinds of internationalist opposition movements 
are brewing...



CB: I probably have e-mail list saturation amnesia, but has the economy of Venezuela 
2000 been discussed here much ?

Re: Re: Re: Thatcher and nationalism

[Ken Hanly]

Well this might be nice if nations intervened in other countries when bad
things are done and were able to stop the bad things happenings. Often they
cannot. Somalia and Rwanda are good examples. In practice however this
practice would turn out to be the white man's burden, or the Monroe
doctrine, or intervention for selfish interests but presented to the masses
as a morality play with the US or whomever being the good guys against the
bad guys.
   Good poetry doesn't necessarily equal good foreign policy.
   Cheers, Ken Hanly

- Original Message -
From: Brad De Long <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 11:31 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:1847] Re: Re: Thatcher and nationalism


> >You do not explain why it is "nutso" to consider that it is no business
of
> >the rest of us what dictators do to their own people.
> >But isn't it common among certain types of  pragmatist and "realists" to
> >claim that foreign policy ought to be based upon advancing national
> >interest? On this view, hardly nutso, what dictators do to their own
people
> >would be a nation's business only if it impacted significantly on
national
> >interests...
>
> No man is an island, entire of itself;
> Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
> If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
> As well as if a promontory were,
> As well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were.
> Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind;
> And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; i
> It tolls for thee
>

More from the Guardian

[Charles Brown]

Lorry drivers paralyse EU capitals
Special report: The petrol war

Ian Black in Brussels
Wednesday September 13, 2000

Blocked roads, wildcat action and frayed nerves tested the patience of
commuters and consumers across continental Europe again yesterday as anger
over the price of petrol spread - hitting Germany for the first time.
In the centre of the Belgian capital Brussels lorries sealed off all exits
to the Rond Point Schuman - considered the symbolic heart of Europe - as
talks between the Belgian government and militant hauliers continued for a
second day.

Further afield, Polish drivers and fishermen were reported to be considering
blockades against the country's fuel depots, refineries and ports.

The European commission said it was powerless to act against blockades
unless the movement of goods across EU frontiers was affected. But
ambassadors of the 15 member states agreed to hold an emergency meeting of
their transport ministers next week.

France's controversial deci sion to concede fuel tax cuts after six days of
protests and blockades by truckers and farmers has, however, made it hard
for other European governments to hold the line.

Also in Brussels, motoring organisations from five countries, including the
British RAC, called on governments to negotiate with Opec - the cartel of
oil-producing countries - whose announcement of increased production to
lower pump prices last week has done nothing to end protests, or to convince
governments to reduce fuel taxes.

"Governments should not give tax concessions to minority special interest
groups taking direct action," the RAC said. "Rather they should defend the
public interest and secure the right to mobility at an affordable price."

Protests continued in the Netherlands, with blockades slowing traffic on
motorways surrounding Rotterdam, the capital Amsterdam and its airport at
Schipol.

In Germany, truckers threatened to disrupt the country's transport network
from tomorrow. Farmers in Hamburg said they would join the country's
transport and taxi strike to press the government to cut diesel taxes and
postpone plans to introduce an ecological tax on fuel.

Police said that about 100 trucks were joined by bus and taxi drivers for a
protest at Saarbrücken. The German finance minister, Hans Eichel, repeated
that scrapping the country's new energy tax would mean a rise in pension
contributions.

Belgian truckers mounted their third day of blockades, vowing to stay put
for weeks unless the government met their demands for lower diesel prices.
Action spread to the southern cities of Charleroi and Nivelles.

"One week, 15 days, three weeks - no problem," said lorry driver Jean Bury.

Lorry drivers in Ireland have also vowed to take action from Friday unless
their similar demands are met, though the Dublin government has said it will
not act outside its budget framework.

Angry Spanish farmers were reportedly planning a series of protests after
talks with the government in Madrid failed to reach a deal on how to
compensate them for rising transport costs.




___
Marxism-Thaxis mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis

From the Guardian

[Charles Brown]

.Blair tells oil firms to resume deliveries
.Police promise to protect tanker drivers
.90% of petrol stations out of fuel
.Buses, trains and schools affected
.NHS faces crisis, operations cancelled
Special report: The petrol war

Patrick Wintour
Wednesday September 13, 2000

Tony Blair was at the centre of an extraordinary attempt to prevent the
British economy collapsing into total paralysis last night when he made a
series of personal pleas to oil bosses to instruct their tanker drivers to
restore exhausted supplies to the country's petrol stations.
But with Britain's car- and road-based economy less than 48 hours from total
shutdown, endangering hospital operations and food supplies, there was no
immediate sign that the majority of tanker drivers would respond.

Mr Blair promised the oil companies that the police would provide complete
protection to drivers, including escorts.

The tanker drivers, many of them sympathetic to the road hauliers'
complaints, say they are too frightened to drive out of the refineries and
oil depots.

But, giving the first indication that the police will get tough with the
protesters, an order was served on 20 pickets last night to leave private
property to stop blocking refineries in Colwick, Nottinghamshire.

The Police Superintendents' Association said officers would have no choice
but to make sure that tankers were able to leave depots and deliver their
fuel if oil companies decided to send them out.

A spokeswoman for BP said the company planned to move petrol once
"assurances" had been given about drivers' safety.

It was "speculation" to say that drivers might refuse to cross the protest
lines, and might take strike action if forced to do so.

Last night tankers taking petrol to empty filling stations left Purfleet
refinery, in Essex: the first sign that the crisis might be easing.

A police officer sat beside the driver of each tanker and police cars drove
alongside as an escort.

In Downing Street the government's civil contingencies committee was
monitoring movements.

By the time Mr Blair spoke, the petrol companies were predicting that 90% of
their stations would have run out of fuel by this morning.

The monumental scale of the crisis yesterday hit the transport system, the
health service, food supplies, schools and businesses.

A dramatic day started with the Prime Minister abandoning a visit to
Yorkshire and rushing back to Downing Street to take personal charge of a
round of crisis meetings.

Despite further panic buying and continuing public support for the protests,
Mr Blair gave an early evening press conference vowing that he would not
buckle.

He insisted that the government could not change tax policy between budgets
in response "to blockades, illegal pickets and direct action".

"Legitimate protest is one thing. Trying to bring the country to a halt is
quite another," he said.

Raising already impossibly high stakes, Mr Blair said: "Were we to yield to
that pressure it would run counter to every democratic principle this
country believes in, and what is more, if the government was to decide its
policy on taxes in response to such behaviour, the credibility of economic
policy vital to any country would be severely damaged.

"I will simply not allow that to happen."

In a frantic attempt to prevent Britain descending into total chaos, Mr
Blair spent the afternoon on the phone urging the chairmen and chief
executives of the five big oil companies to force their tanker drivers to
recommence supplies.

There has been suspicion in the government for some time that the oil
companies have been sitting on their hands, either because they would like
to see fuel duty cut or because their employees are sympathetic towards the
road hauliers.

Ministers acknowledge that they have been urging greater coordination
between the oil companies and the police for 48 hours, with little sign that
the drivers are willing to break the blockades and restore the deliveries of
non-essential supplies.
After his round of phone calls to the oil bosses, Mr Blair said: "We have
made the necessary emergency order of council. The oil companies are agreed
that they must move supplies."

The police had agreed to do "all that is necessary" to protect against
intimidation.

"The main union concerned has issued a strong statement urging members to
work normally.

"Everything is now in place to get the tankers moving. We hope in the next
24 hours to have the situation on the way back to normal. It will take
longer than that to be fully back to normal."

If there is no significant breakthrough, Mr Blair will be forced to invoke
emergency powers and send in the army to take over the distribution of
petrol.

Exposing the deep fears in the cabinet about the political implications of
this crisis, the Education Secretary, David Blunkett, became the first
minister to draw open parallels with the Winter of Discontent of 1979-80,
saying: "We are all bound by our history and remember the 'Crisis? Wh

Re: Re: Re: dulce decorum

[Carrol Cox]

One of the weaknesses of internet communication is that
the frequency of typographical errors tends to preempt
a fundamental principle of interpretation: Assume, unless
there is definite proof otherwise, that the writer not only
means what he/she says but knows what he/she means.
This principle makes clear that Jim really meant dulce
decorum & not dulce et decorum; just as applied to
Keats's sonnet on Homer it makes clear that Keats
knew Balboa not Cortez discovered the Paciific,
and still meant Cortez not Balboa. That is, the
sonnet is structured around the analogy Chapman
is to Homer as Cortez is to Balboa: the second
person to see the immense seas (Homer's world
or the Paciific).

Anyhow, there are variations on dulce et decorum,
the greatest of which are the following two.

IV
These fought in any case,
and some believing,
pro domo, in any case . . .

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later . . .
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;

Died some, pro patria,
non "dulce" non "et decor" . . .
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury aage-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.

V
There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.

---

Carrol

Re: BLS Daily Report

[Jim Devine]

>The durability of the recent productivity surge will help ensure that the 
>U.S. economy stays on a steady path of solid expansion without threat of 
>inflation heating up and ending the longest period of growth in the 
>nation's history, a Federal Reserve official and leading business 
>economists say during the first day of the National Association for 
>Business Economics' annual meeting in Chicago.  In large part, the 
>productivity gains of the last few years have been linked to the tight 
>labor market, as businesses have resorted to greater capital investment to 
>achieve efficiencies, the economists say.  If and when overall economic 
>growth slows to the point where labor market tightness eases, productivity 
>growth might ebb, some analysts suggest.

So the Fed is paying attention to the usually-ignored "Verdoorn's Law," 
which argues that demand-side stimulation encourages labor productivity 
growth? If so, they should avoid hiking interest rates, so as to maintain 
labor-market tightness and productivity growth.

Or are they heeding Marx's writings in Capital, volume I, ch. 25, in which 
he argues that tight labor-power markets encourage labor-power-saving 
technical change?

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

Economics and Literature

[Charles Brown]

The thing I like about Marx's writing is the feeling of a combination of enormous 
erudition combined with earthiness and common sense wit.

CB

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/11/00 12:17PM >>>
I'm amazed that the literary qualities of even chap. 1 of Capital are 
being called into question. Section 4 is one of Marx's most 
deservedly famous passages, the analysis of commodity fetishism, 
which blends political economy, pyschology, philosophy, and cultural 
analysis in dazzling ways. As much as I admire Keynes as a stylist, 
nothing he wrote holds a candle to this.

Doug

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2000:

On its Web site, the Bureau of Labor Statistics offers kid-oriented
statistics on a variety of professions, including "rock star," says the
"Work Week" column of The Wall Street Journal in its end "The Checkoff"
paragraph.  

The durability of the recent productivity surge will help ensure that the
U.S. economy stays on a steady path of solid expansion without threat of
inflation heating up and ending the longest period of growth in the nation's
history, a Federal Reserve official and leading business economists say
during the first day of the National Association for Business Economics'
annual meeting in Chicago.  In large part, the productivity gains of the
last few years have been linked to the tight labor market, as businesses
have resorted to greater capital investment to achieve efficiencies, the
economists say.  If and when overall economic growth slows to the point
where labor market tightness eases, productivity growth might ebb, some
analysts suggest. Government figures recently released showed that labor
productivity-- output per hour worked -- climbed by an annual rate of 5.7
percent during the second quarter of this year among nonfarm businesses, a
surge that surprised even the most optimistic forecasters.  Although hourly
compensation gains accelerated, the productivity rise pushed down unit labor
costs, which posted a 0.4 percent decline in the second quarter. Assessing
the impact of the Fed's six interest rate hikes between June 1999 and May
2000, the NABE forecast panel of 30 economists concluded that the central
bank "is pretty much finished" doing what it needed to do to cool the
expansion from what generally was regarded as red-hot growth through late
1999, says the chief economist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, who presented
the group's latest forecast (Daily Labor Report, page A-10).

Large tech companies are forging bonds with schools that go far beyond
donating computers and showing up on Career Day, says The Washington Post
(page A14).  Increasingly, companies are taking an aggressive role in
creating a curriculum, training teachers and developing materials that
school administrators can take to their school boards to get the courses
approved for credit. The companies say everyone benefits.  Students get
training in skills vital in the new economy; schools get a cutting-edge
technology education program at minimal expense; and the tech businesses
stand to gain workers at a time when the industry has hundreds of thousands
of job openings.  But some educators are wary of the trend, saying that
narrow, employer-designed courses might be inconsistent with a high school's
mission to provide students with a balanced curriculum.  Industry
projections from April on the number of additional workers needed in
information technology over the next 12 months nationwide, and the numbers
of jobs unfilled according to the Information Technology Association of
America, based on the association's survey of hiring managers at 700
companies, are included in a table.

An article by Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at the
University of California, Davis, says that computer industry CEOs, claiming
desperate labor shortage, are pressuring Congress to raise the quota for the
H-1B work visa, under which tends of thousands of foreign-national computer
professionals are brought to work in the United States.  While the industry
denies its motivation is the hiring of cheap foreign labor, the facts say
otherwise.  In spite of the fact that university computer science enrollment
has doubled in the past few years, fewer than half of the computer science
graduates are being offered programming positions.  And it is worse for the
older programmers.  Surveys of high-tech hiring managers have revealed that
only 2 percent of them seek workers having more than 10 years of experience,
and only 13 percent of managers under 30 had hired anyone over age 40 in the
past year.  Most of the older ones leave the field when they cannot find
programming jobs.  Industry lobbyists cite low unemployment rates for
programmers, but these ex-programmers do not show up in those statistics
(The Washington Post, page A35).


 application/ms-tnef

: Thatcher and nationalism

[Charles Brown]

Is Brad a resident sparing partner ?

CB

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/11/00 02:55PM >>>

I agree with everything the Doug says here.  I used the word "provocative"
to weasel out of saying something more precise.

Doug wrote
> 
> That seems a bit excessive. I was interested that Michael used the 
> word "provocative" as a pejorative the other day; what's wrong with a 
> little provocation now and then? Calling something "nutso" in the 
> context of a substantive post is different from a screenful of 
> personal abuse. It's useful to have Brad around to keep the rest of 
> us on our toes; if we can't have a conversation with a bourgeois 
> social democrat, we'll really end up talking only to ourselves.
> 
> Doug
> 
> 


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

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

Re: Re: Re: Re: Economics and Literature

[Charles Brown]

_The Manifesto of the Communist Party_, _Value, Price and Profit_, et al are more 
accessible to popular audiences.

CB



>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/11/00 02:30PM >>>
Brad DeLong wrote:

>>I'm amazed that the literary qualities of even chap. 1 of Capital 
>>are being called into question. Section 4 is one of Marx's most 
>>deservedly famous passages, the analysis of commodity fetishism, 
>>which blends political economy, pyschology, philosophy, and 
>>cultural analysis in dazzling ways. As much as I admire Keynes as a 
>>stylist, nothing he wrote holds a candle to this.
>>
>>Doug
>
>The Yale Humanities Major speaks: º4 may be dazzling to you literati 
>but 'tain't hardly accessible to the toiling masses...

First, I'd say that the toiling masses aren't as dumb as a lot of 
intellectuals think. And second, I don't think Capital was written 
for the toiling masses as its prime audience - though it'd be a lot 
more comprehensible to them than just about anything in the JEP.

Doug

Re: Re: Thatcher and nationalism

[Paul Phillips]

On 12 Sep 00, at 22:58, Ken Hanly wrote:

 Of course often
> interventions are justified by rhetoric that claims we cannot stand by and
> let certain things happen such as the Serb expulsion of Kosovans from
> Kosova, but surely  someone of your sophistication cannot accept this
> nonsense at face value.To a considerable extent the expulsions were a
> predictable result of NATO's own actions. The resulting actions themselves
> involved war crimes, killing of the innocent etc. and did little in the
> short term to stop the expulsions since


It is interesting that, according to all reports, there was no 
substance to the ethnic cleansing by Serbs allegations prior to the 
NATO bombing but there has been massive ethnic cleansing, 
killing, beating and torture and expulsions by the KLA not only of 
Serbs, but also of Roma, Egyptians, Catholic Albanians, Jews, 
Albanians who wanted to stay in Yugoslavia or who would not join 
the KLA -- with the assistance and connivance of the American and 
German NATO troups in KFOR who reportedly confisticated Serb 
arms and gave them to the KLA to drive out all but the KLA 
Albanians.  I would be more impressed by Brad's 'nutso' bluster if 
he concentrated in clearing up the gorrillas in America before 
picking on those in the imperialized periphery.

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba

dulce decorum & all that

[Jim Devine]

[corrected version]

Justin wrote: >Dulce ET Decorum est pro patria mori.<

I know: I was trying to say "sweet decorum," though perhaps Justin will 
want to reenact the scene from "Monty Python's Life of Brian," in which the 
Roman guard lectures Brian on the poor Latin grammar of his anti-Roman 
graffiti and then makes him write the correct version 100 times on the 
wall. It's a great scene.

Of course, that movie summarizes my knowledge _of Christian theology_ the 
way Madonna's "Evita" summarizes my knowledge of Péron.
;-)

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

Re: Re: dulce decorum

[Jim Devine]

At 10:04 AM 9/13/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Dulce ET Decorum est pro patria mori.

I know: I was trying to say "sweet decorum," though perhaps Justin will 
want to reenact the scene from "Monty Python's Life of Brian," in which the 
Roman guard lectures Brian on the poor Latin grammar of his anti-Roman 
graffiti and then makes him write the correct version 100 times on the 
wall. It's a great scene.

Of course, that movie summarizes my knowledge the way Madonna's "Evita" 
summarizes my knowledge of Péron.
;-)

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

More refugees from capitalism

[Seth Sandronsky]

I am no fan of Monbiot but I can't complain about much in this concise and 
damning indictment of present-day capitalism.
Cheers, Ken Hanly

>
>THE GUARDIAN (LONDON)
>June 29, 2000
>
>This is a war of all worlds
>
>By George Monbiot
>
>Fuss about the human genome just hides the brutality of global
>capitalism
>

>We cross the economic frontiers at our peril.

The key to the “new economy”: creating more refugees from capitalism to cut 
employers’ labor costs.

Seth Sandronsky

_
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at 
http://profiles.msn.com.

Re: Re: Women & Industrialization (was Re: capitalistpatriarchy)

[Michael Perelman]

Yoshie, I was looking at my notes and I found:

Humphries, Jane. 1991. "The Sexual Division of Labor and Social Control: An
Interpretation." Review of Radical Political Economics, 23: 3 and 4 (Fall and
Winter): pp. 269-96.
277: The need to monitor female sexual behavior made families reluctant to allow
women to work away from home in unknown and unsupervised settings.

I don't have the article at hand.  It is at school.  I think that I recall in this
context that the elite were offended about the sexual temptations presented by
women in mines, partially because they worked bent over.  Maybe some else recalls.

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> Michael Perelman wrote:
> >Yoshie, I knew that a good many of the early workers in textiles were
> >women, but mining, comes as a surprise.
>
> *   ...For example, in Japan women's work in the coal mines was
> affected by recession after World War I, when more women became
> redundant than men. Protective legislation introduced after World War
> I left women working above ground. However, in 1939 these labour laws
> were set aside because of the intense demand for labour and women
> again worked underground. The prohibition of women's work in the
> mines was restored in 1947 but they continued to sift the coal until
> mechanization of this process in the 1960s. In this example the
> interplay of political, economic and cultural factors can be seen
> technology has an effect but within a specific social context
> (Mathias, 1993: pp. 101-105; Saso, 1990: pp. 25-26)
>
> Mathias, Regina (1993), 'Female Labour in the Japanese Coal-mining
> Industry', in Janet Hunter (ed.), Japanese Women Working, London and
> New York, Routledge.
>
> Saso, Mary (1990), Women in the Japanese Workplace, London, Hilary Shipman Ltd.
>
>    *
>
> Some, though not all, Japanese socialists (as well as women miners,
> of course) fought against the exclusion of women from underground
> mining.
>
> Michael wrote:
> >Were women miners common in Europe?
> And Mine Aysen Doyran wrote:
> >It may be true for Japan as it may be for other late capitalist
> >developers. I don't think that Tsurimi's analysis applies to advanced
> >capitalist countries though.
>
> As a non-specialist in labor history, I have not been able to
> undertake an exhaustive study, but I believe women miners (and women
> industrial workers in general) were common in England & France before
> the rise of "protective" legislations.
>
> *   3.3 The situation of miners and coal heavers at the end of
> the 18thcentury
>
> The working conditions of the colliers in the 18th century
>
> (All page numbers refer to Flinn/Stoker's "History of the British
> Coal Industry, Vol.2")...
>
> ... 3.3.2.2 Women in mines (p. 334/335)
>
> There is evidence that like the men women mostly worked underground.
> They were active as bearers transporting the coal their husbands had
> cut. Working as a bearer was very hard and unhealthy. Later, even the
> owners of mines tried to abolish women's underground labour. They
> argued that these working-conditions transformed soft women into
> "beasts of burthen". In 1842 they abolished women's work in mines.
>
> Women's work was harder than men'sCompared to the men, who worked
> ten hours daily, females had to work fifteen hours a day. They had to
> carry heavy baskets filled with coal and transport them to the
> surface on their backs. Therefore, they had to climb the stairs
> innumerable times (p. 88-92/115)
>
>    *
>
> *   ...[T]he campaign to regulate female and child labour in the
> coal mines...resulted in the 1842 Coal Mines Act, banning women and
> boys under ten from working underground
> 
> *
>
> *   ...Zola [1840-1902] also described [in Germinal] the
> brutalising effects of women and children being employed underground,
> to haul away the coal as the men dug it out. He was moved by the
> plight of pit ponies who lived permanently in the dark tunnels down
> the mine
>
> ...The impact of the novel
>
> With 'Germinal', Zola succeeded in making the impact he had planned.
> He know that a dramatic novel would get polite society talking, where
> boring reports of distant strikes in newspapers were just ignored.
> Some critics were shocked at his brutish portrayal of the miners, and
> deplored their morals - they "deserved what they got". Others said it
> was an "old story" - things were no longer so bad. The novel was set
> in the 1860s. By the 1880s when it was written, socialism and strikes
> were a political force and had made some advances. Employing women
> down mines was forbidden in 1874, though children of 12 still worked
> a 12-hour day until the 1890s. Unions were legalised in 1884
> 
> *
>
> Beginning from 

Re: Re: dulce decorum

[Brad DeLong]

>Dulce ET Decorum est pro patria mori.

touche...

Re: dulce decorum

[JKSCHW]

Dulce ET Decorum est pro patria mori.