Influence and its causes - an overdue aside.
A week ago [6.11.2000] Louis Proyect wrote: Not only do Hobsbawm, Hill and Thompson fail to live up to the example of T.A. Jackson, they seem to have forgotten the lessons imparted by A.L. Morton, the Dean of British Communist historians, who gave the proper emphasis to Ireland. In the seventeenth century, Morton--unlike Hobsbawm--sees the connection between English success and Irish failure. More to the point, it is seems curious to bracket out discussion of the conquest of Ireland when discussing the rapid growth of England and its well-fed urban population at the very time hunger and depopulation were occurring in Ireland. This problem seems to be endemic among historians who prioritize "internal" explanations for the early rise of England. In E.J. Hobsbawm's article on "The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century" in Trevor Aston's "Crisis in Europe: 1560-1660", Ireland receives about as much attention as it gets from Ellen Meiksins Wood. Could this inattention be attributed to the influence of British Stalinist historians on the New Left Review where Wood served as an editor and where Brenner still serves? [D]espite the scholarly peccadilloes of Wood and Brenner, they remain on the side of the working class. There remain the results of the Group's work which can be identified, though obviously in most cases not measured: its effects on its members and, through their individual and collective work, on the interpretation and teaching of history. The individual and collective aspects cannot be seperated, for the Historians' Group of 1946-56 was that rare, possibly unique, phenomenon in British historiography, a genuinely cooperative group, whose members developed their often highly individual work through a constant interchange among equals. It was not a 'school' built round an influential teacher or book. Even those most respected in the Group neither claimed to be authoritative nor were treated as such, at least by the numerically dominant nucleus of the Marxists of the 1930s or earlier vintages. None of us enjoyed the authority of prestige which comes from outside professional recognition, not even Dobb whose position in the academic world was isolated. Fortunately the Party invested none of us with ideological or political authority. We were united neither by common subject-matter, style nor set of mind - other than a desire to be Marxists. And yet it is certain that each of us as an individual historian, amateur of professional, as teacher or writer, bears the mark of our ten years' 'seminar' and none would be quite the same as a historian today without it. Before trying to summarize our achivements, it may be useful to suggest some things we failed to do. For obvious reasons we failed to make much contribution to twentieth-century history at the time, though the positive side of this abstention was that the Marxist historians of 1946-56, unlike the newly radicalized generations of the late 1960s, did not conentrate excessively on the inieteenth and twentieth century labour movement. We never doubted that the study of ancient philsophy (Farringdon, Thomson), of early Christianity (Morris), of Attila (Professor E. Thomson) or medieval peasants (Hilton) was as 'relevant' as that of Social Democratic Federation or the General Strike. Again, in our work on general capitalist development we were propably too reluctant to query such orthodoxies as had been established (e.g. in the USSR during the attacks on Pokrovsky). Curiously enough we were not, on the whole, very strong on the economic side of economic history, and our work probably did not advance as far as it might have done for this reason. It would be wrong to look back upon our work with other than rather qualified self-satisfaction. On the other hand, our achievements were not insignificant. First, there is little doubt that the rise of 'social history' in Britain as a field of study, and especially of 'history from below' or the 'history of the common people', owes a great deal to the work of the members of the group (e.g. Hilton, Hill, Rude, E.P. Thompson, Hobsbawm, Raphael Samuel). In particular the actions of social movements - the theory underlying the actions of social movements - is still largely identified with historians of this provenance, for the social history of _ideas_ was always (thanks largely to Hill) one of our main preoccupations. Second, the members of the group contributed very substantially to the development of labour history. Third, the study of the English Revolution of the seventeenth century was largely transformed by us; and though this is largely due to Hill's 'dominant position in the field of Revolutionary studies today', Hill himself would be the first to agree that the debates among Marxist historians on the Revolution and on his owrk, from 1940 onwards, played a part in the development of his views. The historiography of the English Revolution today is by no means predominantly Marxist; on the other
Rebels with a Cause: a documentary about SDS
In many ways SDS was the organizational expression of the 1960s radicalization, just as the Communist Party was of the 1930s. Given that fact, it was only a matter of time when a documentary film maker would take a stab at SDS using the example of a film like "Seeing Red", which was based on the CP. Directed by Helen Garvy, an SDS veteran herself, "Rebels With a Cause" combines interviews with other SDS'ers--now mostly in their fifties and sixties (listed below)--and film footage from the era. Like "Seeing Red", the general tone is one mixed with feelings of accomplishment and ruefulness about mistakes made under the pressure of events. At its peak in 1968, SDS probably had over 100,000 members--mostly college students radicalized by the war in Vietnam. According to Kirkpatrick Sale's article in Buhle-Buhle-Georgakas' Encyclopedia of the American Left, these members were organized in 350 chapters and the national organization operated with a budget of perhaps $125,000 a year. (Sale is the author of "SDS".) In less than a year, the organization imploded--largely a victim of youthful frustration with the inability to stop the war in Vietnam. SDS was a project of the League for Industrial Society, a social democratic/trade union formation with close ties to Max Shachtman. This early history is documented in Maurice Isserman's "If I Had a Hammer". In 1962 the group met in Port Huron, Michigan and voted to adopt a resolution authored by Tom Hayden that became known as the "Port Huron Statement." http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/huron.html Unfortunately the main ideological input to SDS was a mixture of anarchism and populism rather than the kind of Marxism that had been developing in the 1950s at Cochran and Braverman's American Socialist magazine. Unlike similar formations in Europe, the Americans opted for a mixture of Paul Goodman and C. Wright Mills rather than to try to resurrect a Marxism that had been heavily tarnished by Stalinism and Trotskyist sectarianism. The interviewees describe their involvement with the early SDS, prior to the escalation of the war in Vietnam. Mostly their activity consisted of moving to impoverished neighborhoods in the South or the northern cities and attempting to organize people around very minimal demands, such as getting a traffic light at a dangerous intersection, etc. All this changed in April 1965 when SDS called for a national march in Washington against the war in Vietnam, which drew more than 20,000 people--ten times more than the organizers expected. This march went on despite heavy pressure from the social democratic godfathers of the organization. What the film does not mention is the role of Trotskyists in the Young Socialist Alliance in applying pressure from the other direction. To the credit of SDS, they had adopted a non-exclusionary policy to work with Marxists which was as much of an aggravation to figures like Michael Harrington as was protesting the war in the first place. After 1965, SDS never called for another mass demonstration. It had developed the ultraleft notion that since the "system" was the problem rather than the particular war, it was a waste of time to march against the war. Fortunately it did not retreat into empty theorizing which characterized some of the Marxist sects, but threw its energy into extremely militant campus-based actions. The most famous of these was the student strike at Columbia University--my employer--that effectively shut down the campus in 1968. This action was a fusion of two distinct protests, one against campus complicity in the war and the other a protest by mostly minority students over plans to build a gym in Harlem over the objections of local residents. After taking over the offices of President Grayson Kirk, they rifled through his files and discovered documentation of university complicity with war research. Those files were turned over to students outside the occupation who made them public. Kirk eventually lost his job over the ensuing scandal and the strike itself. The gym was never built. This protest and similar protests around the country electrified the student population in the United States which began to join SDS by the hundreds and thousands. Rather than thinking coolly and calmly about how to maximize their power, the SDS leaders began to lose track of who they were and what they represented. In anguish over the continuing war, they sought a shortcut to ending it using their own militancy rather than the social power of the working class. That power could have only been tapped by seemingly "safe" actions such as the mass demonstrations in Washington and the Moratorium. The SDS'ers kept raising the level of militancy at demonstrations, using the chaotic street battles at the 1968 Democratic Party convention as some kind of model. What they could not understand is that bloody heads were not likely to encourage other students to follow their lead, despite all the press
400,000 Palm Beach votes for hand count
I appreciate Nathan Newman's authoritative contributions and him posting them here. They combine a sure-footed strategic perspective with a strong grasp of the concrete detail of the case. They combine theory with practice. By what is obviously effective cooperative working with a group of other progressive lawyers, they will help shape the debate. I gather a recent Newsweek poll finds that 2/3 of respondents are in favour of fairness rather than haste at this stage. This needs to be reinforced by the sort of points that Nathan and his colleagues are distributing. I want to go on to do two things: 1) to take up some legal questions from the dramatic decision of the Palm Beach electoral supervisory board, just debated and taken in front of the television cameras, to institute a hand recount of all the votes in Palm Beach. 2) to refer to Engels' arguments in his famous Letter to Schmidt 110 years ago, not to argue dogmatically than anything Engels says must be treated as holy text. On the contrary I want to block any innuendo by those who would, as a result of their own temperamental dogmatism, in the name of Marxism, belittle the relevance of being involved in this conflict between two bourgeois political parties. 1) The public meeting of the 3 person Palm Beach electoral committee just broadcast on the 24 hour news channels must go down as one of the most dramatic committee meetings in history. (All right, but they did not have television cameras running when the Bolsheviks voted for the October Revolution). Carol Roberts, as the Palm Beach Country Official, was partly impressive for her determination, and the tactical skill which lay beneath her informal manner. It was also interesting that the Republicans lacked the initiative and the determination effectively to block this. The main argument was that Gore picked up a net gain of 19 votes by handcounting 1% of the precincts of Palm Beach: herefore it is reasonable to suppose that a hand count of the whole county, would affect their citizens ability to contribute to the result of the Presidential election as it would yield 1900 additional Gore votes. But can Nathan or anyone comment on possible weaknesses in this position? a) If this recount took 9 hours, a recount of all 400,000 odd votes will take another 90 hours, cost a lot of money, and make it impossible to declare a result within the 10 day deadline, without someone authorizing much more money. Why can they just not look at the disqualified votes? b) The explanation by the invigilating officer earlier, about the interpretation of inadequately punched holes in terms of 'hanging doors', 'swinging doors', 'pregnant indentures, and 'dimples', showed a haphazard approach to what actually requires a psychological analytic perspective accurately to record the will or intention of the individual, and to distinguish with some accountability and consistency between those who intended to vote for Gore, and those who show no evidence of this. Most seriously for Gore's chances, the committee ruled out depressions on the page (although this is now accepted in other legal contexts certainly in the UK where handwriting has been given in evidence based on the impressions left on the page beneath, when the original has been lost in criminal trials. If there is evidence that a number of electors were not competent at punching the holes, whether through physical frailty, or physical or psychological tremor, why should all evidence of attempted impressions not be included as relevant for the determining of the voters will? c) There are signs that the Republican lawyers will try to resist further hand recounts on the basis that lack of sufficient pressure in punching holes was a fault of the voter and not of some type of error of the equipment. Naturally I would imagine that it is the interaction between the voter and the equipment that should be analysed, and not an arbitrary distinction, but how will Demoratic lawyers handle this? d) Worst of all, what really powers the indignation among Palm Beach voters about being deprived of the right to vote is not so decisively a question of the technical ease of punching holes in the paper, even though scrutiny of that allows Gore to pick up a few more votes. It is above all the 19,000 invalidated votes. The statistical anomaly of Buchanan's votes in relation to Buchanan registered electors, diverging in Palm Beach county, compared to the trend in all other counties, by such an extraordinary margin, would have occurred by chance only with a probability of one in a trillion. Unfortunately although this is probably what is fuelling the impressive level of indignation, it strictly might be considered to be a different legal point from the question of the pressure used to punch the holes, assuming you have chosen the right hole. e) Is it better that the whole Palm Beach County vote is annulled because
Palm Beach votes for hand count
I realise from being able to read a CNN report that it is indeed the rejected votes that are scrutinised. However my question (as amended below) is still relevant for the issue of money, and still more time. I see "Bob Crawford, who replaced Gov. Jeb Bush as commissioner of Florida's Canvassing Commission, said Saturday that if a county misses the state's deadline for certifying results, the entire county's vote will be thrown out. "The statute is very clear that if a county's results are not to us by 5 p.m. Tuesday we shall ignore that county's vote, and the counties need to be very aware of that," Crawford told reporters." a) If this recount took 9 hours, a recount of [the rejected votes out of] all 400,000 odd votes will take another 90 hours, cost a lot of money, and make it impossible to declare a result within the 10 day deadline, without someone authorizing much more money. Chris Burford
Re: 400,000 Palm Beach votes for hand count
Chris, I am running to a wedding in New Hamphire today, so will have to be quick. The point of the Palm Beach decision is that what a "fair count" equals is of course a political decision as long as we use technologies that are known to be systematically inaccurate and systematically and arbitrarily disenfranchise people. In a sense, a more moderate position - one-forth chad versus a sunlight rule in the bizarre terminology which may decide who runs the US - may be a strategic compromise to assist validation of the results. I think the threat to disenfranchise a county if they fail to send votes by Tuesday is empty-- recounts in Florida have gone four months and overturned elections. I am skeptical of legal maneuvering as social change, but in this case legal challenges are about highlighting the illegitimacy of individual disenfranchisement not the wonders of how the legal system serves those individuals. One of the reasons Bush is filing in federal court is that he fears Florida courts, where judges are elected, because those state judges are more likely to reflect the political will of the people in this matter. It's an odd contradiction, but we need to see why voting rights challenges are THE FUNDAMENTAL FIGHT in eletoral politics, far more important than any third party diversions, because expanded franchise is a pure expansion of worker power. So this is all great. I'll followup tomorrow. -- Nathan - Original Message - From: "Chris Burford" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2000 6:19 AM Subject: [PEN-L:4326] 400,000 Palm Beach votes for hand count I appreciate Nathan Newman's authoritative contributions and him posting them here. They combine a sure-footed strategic perspective with a strong grasp of the concrete detail of the case. They combine theory with practice. By what is obviously effective cooperative working with a group of other progressive lawyers, they will help shape the debate. I gather a recent Newsweek poll finds that 2/3 of respondents are in favour of fairness rather than haste at this stage. This needs to be reinforced by the sort of points that Nathan and his colleagues are distributing. I want to go on to do two things: 1) to take up some legal questions from the dramatic decision of the Palm Beach electoral supervisory board, just debated and taken in front of the television cameras, to institute a hand recount of all the votes in Palm Beach. 2) to refer to Engels' arguments in his famous Letter to Schmidt 110 years ago, not to argue dogmatically than anything Engels says must be treated as holy text. On the contrary I want to block any innuendo by those who would, as a result of their own temperamental dogmatism, in the name of Marxism, belittle the relevance of being involved in this conflict between two bourgeois political parties. 1) The public meeting of the 3 person Palm Beach electoral committee just broadcast on the 24 hour news channels must go down as one of the most dramatic committee meetings in history. (All right, but they did not have television cameras running when the Bolsheviks voted for the October Revolution). Carol Roberts, as the Palm Beach Country Official, was partly impressive for her determination, and the tactical skill which lay beneath her informal manner. It was also interesting that the Republicans lacked the initiative and the determination effectively to block this. The main argument was that Gore picked up a net gain of 19 votes by handcounting 1% of the precincts of Palm Beach: herefore it is reasonable to suppose that a hand count of the whole county, would affect their citizens ability to contribute to the result of the Presidential election as it would yield 1900 additional Gore votes. But can Nathan or anyone comment on possible weaknesses in this position? a) If this recount took 9 hours, a recount of all 400,000 odd votes will take another 90 hours, cost a lot of money, and make it impossible to declare a result within the 10 day deadline, without someone authorizing much more money. Why can they just not look at the disqualified votes? b) The explanation by the invigilating officer earlier, about the interpretation of inadequately punched holes in terms of 'hanging doors', 'swinging doors', 'pregnant indentures, and 'dimples', showed a haphazard approach to what actually requires a psychological analytic perspective accurately to record the will or intention of the individual, and to distinguish with some accountability and consistency between those who intended to vote for Gore, and those who show no evidence of this. Most seriously for Gore's chances, the committee ruled out depressions on the page (although this is now accepted in other legal contexts certainly in the UK where handwriting has been given in evidence based on the impressions left on the page beneath, when the original has been lost in criminal trials. If there is evidence that a number of electors
Re: Re: PEN-L digest 814
So you agree that for you politics is a means of self-expression, rather than an attempt to make the world a better place? Brad DeLong Or that acceptance of the inevitibility of the 'iron cage' guarantees it, whereas fighting might defeat it. Brad, I can understand your anger. I feel it also (especially when some Nader supporter smugly said that we could count on her help in fighting Bush for the next four years). However, they do have two good points: 1) Given a s**tload of advantages, the campaign in the end could be lost for the Democrats by a minor spoiler - not a 19% Perot, or a 6% (?) Perot, or a Wallace, or something like that, but by a 3% Nader. That says something, and not something good. Every economic model which was touted in the papers several months ago not only gave the election to Gore, but by various huge margins. So not only did something happen to Gore, but something *huge* happened. Which means that Gore was bleeding arterially without Nader... Which has nothing to do with whether Nader's intervention in this election helped make the world a better place. If someone's bleeding arterially, you get a tourniquet: you don't cut their throat. It didn't. But it was very effective as a means of self-expression... Brad DeLong
Re: 400,000 Palm Beach votes for hand count
Nathan Newman wrote, It's an odd contradiction, but we need to see why voting rights challenges are THE FUNDAMENTAL FIGHT in eletoral politics, far more important than any third party diversions, because expanded franchise is a pure expansion of worker power. First of all I want to acknowledge the importance of the work that Nathan and the Campaign for a Legal Election are doing and to thank them for it. At this point, strategically, I agree that voting rights are more important than a third party challenge. But that agreement is qualified by the fact that in the U.S. "two party system", third parties are necessary to ensure that the fundamental right to vote is something more than a formalism. In the 2000 election, the third party Nader campaign was largely about the sclerosis of that two-party system -- its fiduciary disconnect -- not about electing a third party's candidate. The aftermath of the election has confirmed that position, not invalidated it. The design of the Palm Beach ballot doesn't appear to have been a deliberate attempt to deny people the right to vote but an extraordinary act of distraction by a presumably well-meaning _Democratic_ election official. The first, second and third principles of good document design are TEST, TEST and TEST. The Palm Beach ballot could not have survived rigourous, realistic testing with a representative sample of the prospective voters. Period. This in an age where every sound bite of each candidate is focus group tested to a slippery patina. The contrast is striking and highlights not a deliberate fraud but a set of political priorities so systematically negligent that fraud and overt denial of the right to vote become superfluous. Having said that, it is important to focus on what is most important NOW, which is not recriminations against third party challengers or registered Democrat election officials. What is important now is the struggle to ensure the legal counting of votes and the protection of voter rights and to oppose the usurpation of those rights by a brokered "concession". Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
Visual Realism, versus U.S. Modernism
Greetings Economist, Realism in pictures prompted a revolt in thinking very early in the last century. Picasso started the tilt away from realism in painting, and a second contemporary of his, Duchamp, added in a "conceptual" element. By mid century after WWII Modernism (which embodied the challenges posed by Picasso and others associated with the first wave of European Modernism) had won the cultural war in the U.S. and realism declined as an influence in U.S. painting culture. Movies and television during the same period came to the fore as cultural influences. The two media, movies and television, look primarily realistic so realism did not go away, but the challenge put out in painting never was met either. The challenge was simple enough even if the variations on the themes were plentiful. Realistic painting, perspective painting, ties one to an external seen surface. What about all the things we daily do in our thoughts that have little to do with realistically seeing the blue sky and clouds above? For example, Duchamp made fun of the pretensions of realist visual artists by sneering at the merely perceptual. But more seriously, Picasso invented a way of painting about multiple points of view that profoundly challenged realist painters to match in their method. This essay replies to that challenge. Beginning with Picasso, I believe we need to widen the point Picasso was making slightly. We'll take Duchamp's stance as being the relevant question, why can't realistic painting express "concepts"? The answer to that query is that several thousand years ago people invented writing systems to mimic language. Essentially those ancients asked themselves something of the same question and like Picasso began to explore the potentiality of what it means to go from the literal image to expressing concepts. Or more prosaically, having the means to speak our minds through visual images. Writing systems do pretty good at that job. What is the difference between writing systems and painting? The difference is that a picture is worth a thousand words, didn't you know that? In other words Picasso was asking of making a picture why can't we use them in a language like way? And what does that entail? What does that mean? A visual realism that answers what Picasso asked of pictures must address the language like use of pictures. The ancients would have said that one couldn't mimic in painting seen motion, or representing the internal aspects of things, States of Being. In Picasso's time of course we already had motion pictures. Picasso didn't accept that limitations put upon painting and proceeded to paint multiple points of views which implies that something is moving in a painting. The consequence was that Picasso's painting immediately were far less intelligible. We could see he was painting about something, but what? Furthermore Picasso like his contemporaries knew that motion could be realistic portrayed in movies. So why not explore a language like use of painting? This ambition to use pictures in a language like way is crucial to understanding what visual realism must accomplish to suitably respond to the foundational modernist challenge Picasso addressed to the world. In the nineteenth century sense of painting realism, we could look at their painting and we knew what the content was, but we were restricted to a still painting which couldn't animate itself to show motion. We don't know what content Picasso had in his images without understanding his private language of self expression but we know he was not just painting about surface stillness anymore. In other words Picasso was trying to understand in visual terms how to make pictures that spoke a language (Picasso would deny any such label). Furthermore as time went by Picasso put in his own feelings about what he saw. His paintings of his lovers were replete with his personal feelings. So aside from questioning how painting could show motion, Picasso tried to show emotion as well. Is this a different ambition from seeing motion in movies? Yes. In two ways, first trying to use paintings in a language like way, and secondly the quality of exchange that conversation creates. We tend to ignore the exchange element in Picasso's work. Most of us can't paint. So we don't talk to Picasso we listen or more aptly look at his paintings passively. But Picasso felt himself in a dialogue with Matisse, and with Braque, his contemporaries who had similar areas to explore in their work. But language implies a fundamental clarity in speech of our understanding what a noun or verb is conveying. Furthermore, it is not enough in language to make a private language. Someone listening to us must understand them or the language is useless as a language. Immediately it arises for a realist the issue of the intelligibility of abstraction. In other words does realism forbid abstraction? No, rather
Re: PEN-L digest 814
Brad DeLong wrote Which has nothing to do with whether Nader's intervention in this election helped make the world a better place. If someone's bleeding arterially, you get a tourniquet: you don't cut their throat. Brad, Focus, Brad! It is now November 12 and there is a very different and more important struggle going on. For the first time since the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. faces the very real possibility of a broad democratic movement emerging. The work that Nathan Newman is doing is pointing in that direction. The quarrel you are rehashing has been pre-empted by history. REAL politics requires the flexibility to recognize and respond to a new situation. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
Re: Re: Re: Re: Leftist (but non-Marxist) economists wanted in Europe
Max: The wealth tax is a real difference. Enacting the Ackerman/Alstott scheme might better than anything else now on the horizon. But stake or no stake, I am still wary of the notion of each individual poor person as atomized consumer/investor. It may be an accurate reflection of our social ethic, but it is not an appealing one. Joel Blau Max Sawicky wrote: response to Joel B: The Ackerman/Alstott scheme is different from IDA's in some key respects. Typically with IDA's the account holder contributes in some measure, so it would be hard to have an IDA at age 21 based on contributions from earnings prior to that age. Ackerman/Alstott propose a wealth tax to finance their 'stake.' In principle, the smartest thing many people could do with their stake would be to bank it and let it grow for 20 years or so. Starting a small business, in light of the very high failure rates associated with same, is by far not the obvious option, though w/IDA's my impression is that this is part of the goal, as with 'micro-credit.' If IDA's are not financed out of earnings, then they are more like the A/A scheme. I agree that in an important respect the 'stake' or IDA's are a conservative response. But the plain fact is that if either are financed in a redistributive fashion, they reduce poverty unless you think recipients will reduce their work effort by the amount of earnings that the stake would offset (the Charles Murray thesis). Certainly, a low-wage worker with a stake could still be a low-wage worker their entire life. But the difference is that somewhere along the way, they would have an additional $80K plus interest to use as they see fit. We could say that cash provision is 'individualistic,' but on the other hand public provision is paternalistic. There is a horde of advocates, many well-intentioned, who think they have a better idea what people need then the people do themselves. There is no reason to think the package of benefits for which a given low-income person is eligible would do him or her more good than their cash equivalent. As you know, we have these categorical, in-kind programs because of the influence of provider groups and the political unpopularity of cash aid. The A/A proposal is interesting to me because it provides a philosophical framework which could prove politically compelling for redistributive cash aid. mbs
CounterCoup
Have a look at this one and CIRCULATE WIDELY: http://www.geocities.com/countercoup Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
Re: Re: meme
At 10:03 AM 11/11/00 -0800, you wrote: At 12:42 PM 11/11/2000 -0500, you wrote: i would like to understand the meme meme! As I understand it, meme is to society culture as a gene is to an animal's body. The society and its culture (including technology, I presume) is seen as simply the sum of a bunch of memes, which spread sort of the way that genes do, a sort of quasi-Darwinian process. The followers of Dawkins see "selfish genes" as driving animals, which suggests that memes are similarly greedy, trying to conquer the world. (The more intelligent note that the spread of memes is more Lamarkian than Mendelian, since acquired cultural characteristics are passed on to the next generation.) But it's a really bad sociological theory -- though of course most of those who talk about "memes" sneer at sociology while practicing it. this is exactly what i've thought of it. i am subscribed to a number of hacker/geek lists and whenever someone challenges the dominant norms--say bringing up challenges to their cyberlibertarian views--it is all dismissed as a meme(s)--and evil at that! what is profoundly hilarious to me is that a bunch of ppl hell-bent on the idea that they have the capacity for rational autonomy--a mastery of their fate--can believe that memes can be overpoweringly evil. i suppose it is an instance of what Alvin Gouldner called "methodological dualism"--though i'm stretching it a bit. Gouldner noted that sociologists tend to believe that somehow everyone else is a dupe of social structure while they have, somehow, escaped that fate. this, of course, fits nicely into the cyberlibertarian view that they are the vanguard, that they will survive the darwinian struggle and the rest of us be damned. in the meantime, tho, a fervent desire to squash anything that disturbs them -- in their lexicon, a fnord. so, in my mind, it's their convenient way of trying to understand the forces of social structure which are unfathomable. leftish sociology and marxism are, of course, out of the question so, like rightwingers and conspiracy theories, they turn to meme theory to explain why things just don't go their way. pathetic, really. kelley
Headlines I'd Like to See
Flesh-Eating Virus Consumes Texas Governor's Face Hillary Overheard: "I'm the Queen of Hymietown!" Arrest Yale Law Student with Sack of Absentee Ballots Socialist Workers Party Assumes Power in Florida County Noriega Released from Prison, Installed as Florida Governor Nader to Gore: "You're a Loser Either Way" In Wake of Bush Victory, Alec Baldwin Emigrates things I'd like to see: Seated in a row on the Senate floor: Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Robert Byrd, William Roth, and Mel Carnahan
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Leftist (but non-Marxist) economists wanted in Europe
I agree that's well taken. But insofar as a great part of our consumption is individually financed, and ever more will be so, redistributing wealth in the form of cash will be an enduring and compelling option in the pursuit of equality. mbs The wealth tax is a real difference. Enacting the Ackerman/Alstott scheme might better than anything else now on the horizon. But stake or no stake, I am still wary of the notion of each individual poor person as atomized consumer/investor. It may be an accurate reflection of our social ethic, but it is not an appealing one. Joel Blau
Re: Re: CounterCoup
At 01:02 PM 11/12/00 -0500, Max Sawicky wrote: Have a look at this one and CIRCULATE WIDELY: http://www.geocities.com/countercoup Tom Walker Pretty remarkable, the extent of activity. I've waxed on this on LBO, so if anyone is interested they can check the archives. I'll just summarize here. I think this is the right protest at the wrong time, and timing is everything in politics. It is clearly predicated on Gore's margin of defeat, not on any abiding concern with democracy. i think you're wrong about the motivations behind protest--particularly w.r.t. floridians. the other night they interviewed a woman on the local news. she was protesting. get this: she thought that gore had won both! so, i started asking around. there is an abiding anger about the b.s. people have encountered. and one of the things that is possibly interesting about this as an issue is that it is seen as far more than a race-based issue. whites are just as ticked, seems to me. yeah, it can go over board in terms of the opportunistic use of race in order to get gore elected. still, it's not clear to me that it is about gore for the folks protesting or who are upset. kelley
Re: CounterCoup
Max Sawicky wrote, I think this is the right protest at the wrong time, and timing is everything in politics. It is clearly predicated on Gore's margin of defeat, not on any abiding concern with democracy. I agree about the wrong timing but also about the remarkable extent of activity. With apologies for the byzantine 'dialectic' of the following, I think it is inevitable that popular protest express itself in inarticulate and perhaps inappropriate slogans. CounterCoup foregrounds a slogan -- a leap to making the popular vote total decisive -- that is really the flip side of the Bush/Baker demand to "get it over with for the sake of the system". There's also the reckless claim that the Palm Beach fiasco was a deliberate fraud. Conspiracy theories travel faster than the speed of light. But there is the fact that the complexity of the situation is hard to grasp (even among the elite group of intellectuals on this list). Our job (if I can put it that way) is neither to affirm or deny simplistic reductions but to situate them in their historical specificity (only partly kidding). Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC
Re: Re: Re: PEN-L digest 814
At 08:39 AM 11/12/2000 -0800, you wrote: Which has nothing to do with whether Nader's intervention in this election helped make the world a better place. If someone's bleeding arterially, you get a tourniquet: you don't cut their throat. the DLC answer: you have to take responsibility for your own bleeding! Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Heisenberg's election
Interesting and not trivial free association about what is going on. The butterfly effect of the butterfly ballot. The adversarial two- (or more) party system is meant to be evenly balanced and meant to give each candidate the opportunity to thwart their opponents. For a variety of reasons, including in my opinion features of "third way" politics, this election was particularly close. That is shown in the results in the Senate, the House of Representatives, and in a large number of states. As formally defined in the mathematics of dynamical systems theory, popularly called chaos theory, the butterfly effect is 'sensitivity to initial conditions'. The term 'initial' refers to the conditions at the start of a mathematical model or an experiment which is closed from outside influences. Real life of course is ongoing and the relevance of the butterfly effect has to be adapted to apply not just to "initial" conditions. We can now say that in certain situations with feedback iterative loops shaping the nature of the interacting phenomena, at certain times, apparently chance variations in the conditions may produce a qualitative effect out of all proportion to the apparent quantitative change in the variable concerned. Randomness and probability seem to be part of the fundamental quantum texture of the universe. Butterfly effects happen in competitive ball games when balls may just bounce a quarter of an inch to the left of where expected. And they happen in elections. Both these are human systems in which the random nature of chance may have a disproportionate effect. Hence their exciting nature. The fact though that the Democratic and Republican parties have subjected themselves to such a close- fought risk-filled contest, should not be used as an excuse to glorify the two party system which keeps the overall dynamics of political life, firmly under the influence of capitalism. At 17:39 10/11/00 -0800, you wrote: Reflection on Peter's comment One of my colleagues refers to this as Shrodinger's election... plus this from a news article on butterfly ballots in MA The problem in Massachusetts was the chad -- the piece of paper that is supposed to separate completely from a hole-punch ballot. When it does not, counting machines may not be able to ''read'' the ballot properly. suggests we invoke Heisenberg, too. Here's why. A lot of these Palm Beach ballots may have partly-punched holes -- these little "chad" things just hanging on, flipping back and forth randomly. Are they punched or not? Each time you run the ballot through the machine, you may get a different answer. Moreover, by physically moving the ballot through the machine reader you may detach some partly-punched "chads," thus changing the thing counted every time you count. Best, Colin Chris Burford London
(Fwd) Mike's Message - serious political humour
--- Forwarded message follows --- Subject:(Fwd) Mike's Message - serious political humour Priority: normal November 11, 2000 To: Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan From: Michael Moore, citizen Dear Mr. Secretary General: Help us! Massive election fraud is taking place in an area that looks like a banana republic -- but is actually part of the United States of America! We are sitting here helpless as our leaders appear unable to do anything about this stolen election. On behalf of freedom-loving people everywhere, I appeal to the world community and the United Nations for immediate intervention. There is ample evidence to indicate that the votes of thousands of our citizens were not counted or, worse, were given to a man who has a sister named "Bay." Further evidence also shows that hundreds of African American voters were simply not allowed to vote. I ask that you appoint humanitarian ambassador/carpenter Jimmy Carter to head up an official United Nations team of election observers from Rwanda, Brunei, Bosnia and South Africa and send them to this state we call "Florida." They are desperately needed to oversee the re-count, the hand-count and any other forms of counting being conducted by people who apparently can count. Remember that guy Milosevic in Yugoslavia trying to claim victory when he got the least number of votes? He would love Florida! Next to watching greyhound dogs run in circles, election fraud is South Florida's favorite pastime (I am enclosing, for your observer team, copies of the Miami Herald series on voter fraud which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize). It appears on the surface that lame graphic design is at the root of this ballot problem, especially in Palm Beach County where Jewish votes were given to a man who always has a nice word to say about Third Reich. But even more telling is the situation in the Daytona Beach area. In that county, the Socialist Workers Party candidate, James Harris, received a whopping 9,888 votes. When your observers arrive, they will discover that the socialist revolution in Daytona Beach is running a distant third to drunken college spring breaks and NASCAR racing. In fact, you will be hard-pressed to find a single Bolshevik in Daytona Beach, let alone a decent cappuccino. What CBS News discovered is that these 9,888 votes in Daytona Beach for the socialist Mr. Harris represented more than HALF of his ENTIRE 19,310 votes nationwide! Some might see this a communist plot; election officials in Florida have tried to pass it off as a "computer glitch." I call it fuzzy math. You should know that the ruler of this disputed region of our country is the brother of the presidential candidate who is benefiting from these shenanigans, George W. Bush. He is already beginning to function as the "President-Elect," even though he got fewer votes in the country than his opponent, Al Gore! The networks had reported that Gore won the state of Florida, but after the one Bush (the candidate) made a call to the other Bush (the governor of Florida), suddenly the Bush running for president was ahead. This must sound very familiar to you. I know you have had to deal with "the relatives" before in places like Indonesia and The Congo, and, hey, who can blame them? Everyone wants to see family members do well. But in this case, the self-declared "President-Elect" is also the son of the former President who was dethroned by Gore and his running mate 8 years ago. Does any of this make sense? Would it help to know that the father of the "President-Elect" was also the head of the CIA? Just so you know what you are getting into. If you look at the map of the U.S., Florida is the section that seems like it is about to drop off into the sea. It is a backwater area whose climate and topography -- swamps, mosquitoes, unbearable humidity, reptiles everywhere -- resembles much of the Third World. It is truly a scary place -- ask any German tourist! It is the easiest state in which to buy guns in the United States. Prisoners are executed without the sort of due process you get in other parts of the world. According to your own U.N. report, more children are immunized in Jamaica than in Florida, and a baby has a better chance of living to see it's first birthday if it is born in Cuba than in Miami. Most of us just go there to get warm in the winter -- and, for many, Arizona is looking better and better these days. Please, Mr. Annan, you have to get here right away. The self-declared "President-Elect" is trying to stop the counting of the ballots. He knows what these ballots will reveal. His propaganda ministers have been lying to the American people for days now, saying things like "this kind of ballot is used everywhere, including in Chicago for Jesse Jackson's son!" Our esteemed journalist, Ted Koppel, held up the Chicago ballot last night on TV to show that it looks
(Fwd) Moore on Gore
--- Forwarded message follows --- Date sent: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 13:49:23 -0600 Subject:(Fwd) Moore on Gore Priority: normal Michael Moore Writes to Al Gore October 31, 2000 Dear Vice-President Gore: Hi! How are you! It's been awhile since we've talked. Everything OK? Sorry. Enough teasing. I've been getting a lot of calls from your friends and supporters. Man, are they freaked out! They actually think you are going to lose. Talk about no faith in the quarterback! Hasn't anyone told them that Bush didn't even win his OWN Republican primary in Michigan? "Swing state?" Ha! According to your people, all Ralph or I have to do is wave a magic wand and the Nader voters will "come back to Gore." Look, Al, you have screwed up -- big time. By now, you should have sent that smirking idiot back to Texas with a copy of " Hooked on Phonics" in his hands. You should have wiped the floor with him during the three debates. But you didn't. And now your people are calling ME, asking ME to do the job YOU'VE failed to do! Jeez, I've got enough on my plate these days, between work and the holidays coming up and the leaves I should be raking -- and now I'm supposed to save YOU? Unbelievable! If you recall, I sent you a personal letter back in June asking you why I should vote for you instead of Ralph Nader for President. You sent me a four-page reply, thanking me for my "provocative letter," and outlining the VERY reasons that I knew would find you in the predicament you are in this week. There is something I think you don't understand. You don't realize that it's YOU and the Democrats that are responsible for the possibility of Bush winning next Tuesday. Instead of being men (we aren't putting any women on the ticket yet, are we?) and owning up to your mistakes, you and your people are blaming some rumpled senior citizen lawyer who is only following his conscience. I mean, really! Ralph Nader has devoted his entire life to making the rest of our lives better. Because of him we have the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the EPA, OSHA, airbags and seatbelts, the Freedom of Information Act -- the list goes on and on. What have YOU done to save a few million lives? Yet, you attack this decent man and those who support him. Let's get one thing straight -- we didn't leave you, YOU left us. You and your "New Democrats" abandoned the poor, the working class, and the middle class. Your support for NAFTA has cost hundreds of thousands of people -- your very supporters -- their jobs. In my hometown of Flint, 32,000 GM jobs have been lost since you and Clinton took office. That's 5,000 MORE GM jobs than were lost there during the ENTIRE 12 years of Reagan/Bush! Are you even aware that two-thirds of the school children in Flint live below the federal poverty level? And you wonder why the race in Michigan is so close! These people you left behind had nowhere else to go EXCEPT to Nader -- unless they choose to just stay home on Election Day, which is what the majority of them will do. You and the Democrats have created the monster know as "W." There were more layoffs in the U.S. last year than in any year in the past decade. There were more family bankruptcies filed last year than any year in our history. The average family carries more personal debt now than any time since the Great Depression. And yet, you cynically take a bus ride through the Midwest calling it "The Great Lakes Prosperity Tour." Has it crossed your mind why the majority of the "swing states" where the election is too close to call are in the rust belt that begins in Missouri and extends to Pennsylvania? Your attempts to scare Nader voters have only backfired on you. Once NARAL started running its anti-Nader ads in Minnesota, Ralph jumped up to 10% in the polls! People are not stupid. You can howl all you want about how "Bush will appoint Supreme Court justices like Scalia and Clarence Thomas." But we the people know who voted to PUT that right-wing nut Antonin Scalia on the court. It was YOU, Al Gore, the senator from Tennessee who stood up and voted "YEA!" the day Scalia was confirmed in the Senate! If we ever lose Roe v. Wade, YOU are the one with the blood on your hands, and those of us, including Ralph Nader, who fought the Scalia nomination, will never forget the jeopardy you and your fellow Democrats put women in with that vote. And when 11 of your Democratic senators voted to put Clarence Thomas on the Court, giving him the slim 52 to 48 majority he needed, your party (which was in control of the Senate at that time!) threatened every woman in America. For the love of God, do NOT have the audacity to come at us now with your scare tactics about how women may lose the right to chose. You have no credibility. So, what do we do? One thing is certain -- George W. Bush MUST NEVER SIT IN THE OVAL OFFICE. Having met both you and George W. in
Re: CounterCoup
Said Walker: it is inevitable that popular protest express itself in inarticulate and perhaps inappropriate slogans. Replied Sawicky: ok. And inappropriate personalities, like Jerry Brown, for instance. Exactly. so both sides are full of it. so what? So the "sidedness" requires that both "sides" frame the issue in oppositional terms around an agreed focal point. In this case, the focal point is choosing a winner. to situate simplistic reductions in their historical specificity . . . You lost me there. Which is to say that the right analysis at the right time doesn't necessarily carry the day, either. Timing may well be everything in politics and may even explain why a "worse" argument may, at a particular time and place, defeat a better one. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island (604) 947-2213
Re: Influence and its causes - an overdue aside.
Thank you. It is hard to evaluate the argument that to which you responded with the passage from Hobsbawm, that some of the English marxist historians did not give the proper emphasis to Ireland. As far as the criticism of Hill is concerned I cannot see how it fits. Although not centrally an economic historian, his analysis of history, including that of ideas, is imbued with implications of the economic base affecting the superstructure. To accept the perspective that Proyect is promoting you would have to prove a substantial and direct transfer of value from Ireland to England which went into capitalist enterprises, and did not also come from other quarters. Hill interestingly writes in the Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution about the economic ideas of Francis Bacon: "His own policies aimed at economic self-sufficiency. He wanted the wilds of Scotland to be colonized, Ireland to be civilized, the Netherlands and their empire to be annexed [footnote by Hill - The Rump did its best to carry out this programme.] He shared Hakluyt's view that England's over-population was only relative: a resolute policy of fen drainage, cultivation of the wastes and commons, colonization of Ireland, expansion of the fishing industry, overseas trade, and the carrying trade would soon show that the problem was 'rather of scarceness, than of press of people'. " This would fit with a more general theory that the rising bourgeoisie was looking everywhere for all opportunities to accumulate, primitive or otherwise. Hill's main strategic thesis is about the English revolution being a bourgeois democratic revolution presented in religious forms. I do not see that one would expect him to put the thesis and be able to martial the facts that Proyect and Philip Ferguson expect. Certainly Hill is explicit about the subjugation of Ireland by England in the 17th century and about the massacre of Drogheda. He does illustrate that the need for armed suppression in Ireland created the need for repressive armies that could be turned against the English. This is an echo of the anti-democratic consequences of the subjection of Wales in previous centuries. However it does not directly feed into the capitalist economic revolution; rather the bourgeois political revolution. Thus Hill writes in "The Century of Revolution", that Thomas Wentworth was made Lord Deputy in Ireland in 1632. "'Black Tom Tyrant' ruled in Ireland with a heavy but efficient hand, reducing the Irish Parliament to submission and building up an army of Papists which aroused apprehension in England." "In November 1641 a rebellion took place in Ireland, at last liberated from Strafford's iron hand. ... The opposition group in Parliament refused to trust a royal nominee with command of an army to reconquer Ireland. So the question of ultimate power in the state was raised. " Hill goes on to describe in terse sentences the escalation of the conflict with the Grand Remonstrance, the King's attempts to arrest the 5 opposition leaders, Charles abandoning London, and the inevitability of civil war. I really do not know what to make of a criticism of the English Marxist historians in general and including Hill in it. On the one hand Hill notes that a great deal of Irish land passed to London merchantrs who had lent money to Parliament. But he also notes that "Parliament passed an Act for draining the Fens in the same month as the Levellers were put down at Burford." and he notes such things as "Clover seed was on sale in London by 1650. Its use, recommended by agricultural writers, revolutionised the cultivation of barren land." I think we can assume the distinction between primitive accumulation and capitalist accumulation was familiar to this English group of Marxist historians, who, as a group, were rather admirable. Chris Burford London
Re: Re: Influence and its causes - an overdue aside.
Chris Burford: I do not see that one would expect him to put the thesis and be able to martial the facts that Proyect and Philip Ferguson expect. But clearly it is not the case that the argument I was postulating was not opposed to the thesis that despite the existence of fen-clearing in the 16th century Ireland was not subject to democratic accumulation forces not on account of the absence of a butterfly ballot when Cromwell clearly stated that the revolution would have to defend itself from ground-rent seeking papists? Or if this argument is not clear, one can only say so because it is not specious in the contradictory sense especially when you squint, however when it is risen in a dialectical fashion like yeast in a cupcake, you can not deny that the same point was made by Dmitroff at the 1937 Comintern, can you? You'd better not. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Query re taxation in the USSR
There was income tax, mainly. It was low. I think there was a VAT. Look uit up in David Lane's Economy and Society in the USSR. some title like that. Lane published a series of books over 20 some years with words like tha in the title that are worthy, useful, dull, and reliable. --jks Does anyone have information at hand re taxation in the USSR. Was there income tax? What were the rates? What other forms of tax were there? Cheers, Ken Hanly _ 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: Re: Re: PEN-L digest 814
Which has nothing to do with whether Nader's intervention in this election helped make the world a better place. If someone's bleeding arterially, you get a tourniquet: you don't cut their throat. Sorta depends on your attitude towards them, no? If Gore was on fire, I wouldn't pee on him to put it out. --jks _ 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: PEN-L digest 814
Brad DeLong wrote Which has nothing to do with whether Nader's intervention in this election helped make the world a better place. If someone's bleeding arterially, you get a tourniquet: you don't cut their throat. Brad, Focus, Brad! It is now November 12 and there is a very different and more important struggle going on. For the first time since the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. faces the very real possibility of a broad democratic movement emerging. The work that Nathan Newman is doing is pointing in that direction. The quarrel you are rehashing has been pre-empted by history. REAL politics requires the flexibility to recognize and respond to a new situation. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Bowen Island, BC Touche...
Re: Re: Query re taxation in the USSR
At 02:20 AM 11/13/2000 +, you wrote: There was income tax, mainly. It was low. I think there was a VAT. Look uit up in David Lane's Economy and Society in the USSR. some title like that. Lane published a series of books over 20 some years with words like tha in the title that are worthy, useful, dull, and reliable. --jks I'm not an expert, but it wasn't a VAT, but a "turnover tax," which would be proportional not to (total revenues minus raw materials and intermediate goods costs) like a VAT but instead proportional to total revenues. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Influence and its causes - an overdue aside.
At 20:30 12/11/00 -0500, Proyect wrote: Chris Burford: I do not see that one would expect him to put the thesis and be able to martial the facts that Proyect and Philip Ferguson expect. But clearly it is not the case that the argument I was postulating was not opposed to the thesis that despite the existence of fen-clearing in the 16th century Ireland was not subject to democratic accumulation forces not on account of the absence of a butterfly ballot when Cromwell clearly stated that the revolution would have to defend itself from ground-rent seeking papists? Or if this argument is not clear, one can only say so because it is not specious in the contradictory sense especially when you squint, however when it is risen in a dialectical fashion like yeast in a cupcake, you can not deny that the same point was made by Dmitroff at the 1937 Comintern, can you? You'd better not. I think this post is offensive, and is intended to be offensive. If Michael thinks it is an example of humour I would suggest that there is humour that is shared with someone and humour that is against someone. Of course it is often the stuff of debate, subtly or not so subtly, to discredit another opinion or another person. Michael has laid down draconian rules for this list that generally IMO have contributed to a rise in standards so that the issues that are debated are ones of content, and not of status in a pecking order. But if Proyect wants to suggest that the problem is my obscurity arising from over-long sentences I suggest that he is more vulnerable to the charge of obscurity due to his elusiveness and his tendency to muddle and distort arguments. Yoshie has already gently commented on Proyect's summation of Brenner (6th November): Actually, I think that there are ways in which we can constructively criticize Brenner's views, but while Lou insists on misrepresenting them, others don't get around to critical examination of Brenner, since we are busy saying, "No, that's not what Brenner says...". This gets very tedious. One cannot expect an interlocutor or protagonist to agree with oneself. But for an exchange to get anywhere one does not expect the arguments to shift around. I cannot comment on the evidence that Proyect misrepresents Brenner, but it is a serious and damaging charge in the long run from his point of view. What is the point of spending time reading a lengthy summation of Brenner, if it is subtly wrong? [Is that sentence short enough not to be misrepresented by ridicule?] Now in Proyect's summary posted on 6th November to which Hinrich Kuhls quoted a passage by Hobsbawm, among other things Proyect seemed to be alleging that some of the English marxist historians did not give "due emphasis" to the question of Ireland, and that this was somehow linked to "Stalinist" influence on the board of NLR, a couple of decades later. I put the proposition clearly enough and I apologise for the typo: It is hard to evaluate the argument [that] to which you responded with the passage from Hobsbawm, that some of the English marxist historians did not give the proper emphasis to Ireland. I then took evidence from Hill and concretely illustrated how he handled Ireland in the course of his main focus on the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century. That could be commented on as to whether it is sufficient or insufficient. Did Hill give Ireland no more attention than the fact that clover seed became available in London in 1950 and is valuable for using waste-land? I think Proyect shoots himself in the foot as a serious owner of 'The' marxism list if he makes out that he cannot comment reasonably on such a question and instead has to retreat to implying that the questioner is chronically unclear. What also is the point in attributing Dimitrov's strategic speech to the Comintern as 1935 instead of 1937, except to suggest it is unworthy of serious consideration? What is the point of muddling up words and concepts instead of clarifying their inter-relationship in the paragraph at the head of this post? I had refrained from explicitly posing a question for Proyect's comments in my previous contribution on this thread, because I had not read all his material on the Brenner thesis. However the issue of the place of Ireland and other colonies in the rise of English capitalism is conceptually a question of the relative contribution of primitive and capitalist accumulation. It is not clear to me that Proyect handles this distinction clearly. Perhaps he would like to demonstrate that he does. All serious left-wingers are to a large extent self-taught, but as in conventional academic circles, if you do not attempt to address a serious argument in a serious way, ultimately you disqualify yourself from serious debate. Chris Burford London
