Re: The exchange value of forests
In theoretical terms you both seem to be saying that the concept of credits and making charges can work progressively but they should be related to new capitalist activity, not virgin land that has been capitalised, ie seen as a privately owned resource, and an asset equivalent of capital. It could be argued that this interpretation would slightly advantage living labour compared to dead labour. I suspect there may be other pitfalls about how such an apparently equal rule would work out in a very unequal world. It might give further advantages to the capital intensive countries who could invest in more productive means of production that would benefit carbon emission control. (That is of course one of the aims.) Whether John Prescott and Dominique Voynet would be prepared to think this through is another matter. Chris Burford London At 18:00 26/11/00 -0500, you wrote: Michael, I would agree. The issue seems to me giving credit or making charges for any net changes in CO2 generation. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, November 26, 2000 5:40 PM Subject: [PEN-L:4987] Re: Re: The exchange value of forests Fine, if you want to give credit for sinks, then charge for policies that reduce sinks, such as building on farmland or cutting down forests. On Sun, Nov 26, 2000 at 05:14:48PM -0500, J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote: I would say that there is nothing wrong with giving credit for carbon sinks. But, they should not be given for existing carbon sinks but rather for newly created ones. So, if the US, or anybody else, plants new forests, then give them credit.
Ohmans on 'marginal' constant capital #1
G'day all, Quoth the gratifyingly interested Norman: " ... but doesn't the capitalist-entrepreneur deserve SOME remunerative "wage" for the effort, organizational talent, time, worry and risk he/she takes to establish the business that benefits the workers who are employed and society which gets to use the products of the business? why assume that ALL the M'-M is surplus labor value and hence "exploitative"?" What do people with half an hour to spare think of the below? I think it might help us organise our responses to the sorts of questions Norman asks, whilst also helping those of us interested in the challenges with which 'the information economy' presents us. I'll send it in three parts (and, for those, like me, with old boxes and old telephone lines, I promise not to do such a thing again for a long time). As Doug Ohmans has posted the URL for this paper here before, I've taken it upon myself to go the extra yard, Saving Marxism: A Contribution to Economic Theory by J. Doug Ohmans 1990 ABSTRACT The role of constant capital in economic theory corresponds to the political question of rewards for entrepreneurship while still holding to a pure labor theory of value. INTRODUCTION The thought of Karl Marx is a vast field of inter-related theory and observations, with medium-grade ore everywhere on the surface for the picking, valuable lodes underground, and nuggets to be found whose value seems to increase after we bring them home. In this paper we shall progressively focus our attention on an ever narrower issue, until we reach our objective: an understanding of the role of constant capital, especially "fixed capital" such as machinery, in contributing to commodity value. The problem I think is an important one, for the Marxian proposition that variable capital not constant capital is the source of new value is a pillar of his labor theory of value, upon which much of his social critique rests. The labor theory of value in turn Marx adopted from David Ricardo, who built on some of the insights of Adam Smith. No thinker, not even Karl Marx, can fully dominate every implication of his or her thinking, and when it comes to the role of constant capital, Marx reveals considerable uncertainty. I believe that the problem of clarity revolves around a confusion of terms expressing averages with those involving marginal quantities. In short, I will conclude that for Marx's labor theory of value to be correct, there must be on average no value withdrawn from constant capital beyond what is put into it through labor. However, such additional value does seem to exist on the average, as Marx acknowledges. Therefore, in an analogy with Ricardo's theory of rent, perhaps it is at the margin (where machine use is barely preferable to pure labor-power) that no new value is created by the machine itself, whereas average constant capital is indeed a positive factor of production worthy of some reward. The labor theory of value begins with the perception that labor-power is different from other factor inputs. As Braverman puts it, "Only one who is the master of the labor of others will confuse labor-power with any other agency for performing a task, because to him, steam, horse, water, or human muscle which turns his mill are viewed as equivalents, as 'factors of production'" (Braverman, p.51). Lester Thurow makes a similar point: "In general, the attempt to make labor into just another factor of production ignores a wide variety of characteristics that make human investments very different from physical investments" (Thurow, p.175). In fact, he says, "If one were ranking various economic markets along a continuum by the extent to which they reflected the postulates of the price-auction model, financial markets would probably be placed at one end and labor markets at the other" (Thurow, p.215). Nevertheless, to many economists it has seemed unacceptable to claim that labor is the sole source of value. Of course Marx never denied that machinery would increase productivity. Marx suggests that this change would resolve itself in the short run into lower values (prices) and in the long run into a new unit of measurement for simple labor. He could not have found common ground with Kenneth Boulding who said, "It is not 'labor' that produces a commodity or product...but human knowledge and know-how, operating through institutions which enable this know-how to capture energy and rearrange materials" (Boulding, p.186). Boulding and others reject the labor theory of value as "just simply wrong" because in Marx's version, it is unable to offer a reward to non-labor factors such as these. RICARDO'S LEGACY Marx adopted from his predecessor David Ricardo the solution to the "skilled labor problem." Ricardo had shown that constancy of wage differentials allowed him to ignore them in tracing changes in
Ohmans #2
CONSTANT AND VARIABLE CAPITAL IN MARX In chapter 8 of "Capital," Marx distinguishes between constant and variable capital: "That part of capital," he says, "which is turned into a means of production, i.e. the raw material, the auxiliary material and their instruments of labour, does not undergo any quantitative alteration of value in the process of production. For this reason, I call it the constant part of capital, or more briefly, constant capital. On the other hand, that part of capital which is turned into labour-power does undergo an alteration of value in the process of production. It both reproduces the equivalent of its own value and produces an excess, a surplus-value, which may itself vary, and be more or less according to circumstances.This part of capital is continually being transformed from a constant into a variable magnitude. I therefore call it the variable part of capital, or more briefly, variable capital"(Marx, p.317). Braverman's definitions are similar: "when the capitalist buys buildings, materials, tools, machinery, etc., he can evaluate with precision their place in the labor process. He knows that a certain portion of his outlay will be transferred to each unit of production, and his accounting practices allocate these in the form of costs or depreciation. But when he buys labor time, the outcome is far from being either so certain or so definite that it can be reckoned in this way, with precision and in advance. This is merely an expression of the fact that the portion of his capital expended on labor power is the 'variable' portion, which undergoes an increase in the process of production for him, the question is how great that increase will be" (Braverman,pp.57-58). Marx's very definitions establish his labor theory of value, for he defines away increments of value stemming from the "constant" capital portion. By "instruments of labor," he is referring to "buildings, machinery, drain-pipes, ploughing oxen, apparatus of every kind" (Marx, p.756). Marx was writing in the 1860's when manufacturing apparatus was simple and visible. Today among non-labor factors we might include not only computers but even such intangibles as know-how embodied as software or the institutional context exemplified in a patent. It is when we move in this direction that Marx's claims for constant capital may become untenable. Another function of the constant/variable capital distinction in Marx is to explain fetishism," the "reification of a social relation." Constant capital may not contribute to value, but it does come to dominate work. Braverman says, "The means of production become the property of the capitalist, and thus past or dead labor takes the form of capital. The purely physical relationship assumes the social form given to it by capitalism and itself begins to be altered. The ideal toward which capitalism strives is the domination of dead labor over living labor" (Braverman, p.227). The device of distinguishing constant from variable capital was Marx's first step toward his full theory of the capitalist economy, involving further distinctions such as 1) circulating capital, fixed capital and circulation capital, and 2) money capital, productive capital and commodity capital. But the constant/ variable distinction was especially useful in depicting the overall historical tendency of their ratio, the "organic composition of capital," to increase. Marx tried to show that, if we assume a tendency of profit rates across industries to equalize, then price will exceed value in capital-intensive industries while value will exceed price in labor-intensive industries, thereby accelerating the redistributional process of capital accumulation. With a high versus a low organic composition of capital, the value of commodities will be relatively low, and their price, while low in absolute terms, will be relatively high because it absorbs or benefits from averaging the high surplus value creation in the labor-intensive sector. However, this interpretation of capital accumulation depends upon prior acceptance of Marx's labor theory of value. If we assume that constant capital does not contribute to surplus value but does contribute to price, then naturally the price will exceed value most greatly where constant capital is concentrated. But were we to hold that constant capital is a factor of production which creates value, Marx's divergence of price from value would collapse. To seek a theoretical justification for rewarding entrepreneurs and management, we do not have to imply as do the ideologists of business that inanimate machinery receives the factor reward, and we can still agree with Marx that the"abstinence" of the money-lenders is a sham. The question of a factor reward to capital touches on the long standing debate as to the role of management. On the Marxist side, in a famous essay Stephen Marglin
Ohmans #3
MARX'S 'PASS-THROUGH' OF CONSTANT CAPITAL Marx's labor theory of value can be understood either positively or negatively. Positively, it entails the proposition that "Human labor, whether directly exercised or stored in such products as tools, machinery, or domesticated animals, represents the sole resource of humanity in confronting nature" (Braverman, p.51). Or, in Marx's words, "As exchange values, all commodities are merely definite quantities of congealed labour-time" (Marx, p.130) The link between labor-power and constant capital is that the former is necessary to "valorize" the latter: "By the simple addition of a certain quantity of labour, new value is added, and by the quality of this added labour, the original values of the means of production are preserved in the product" (Marx, p.309). Extraction of surplus value arises from the productive interaction of congealed labor, means of production, with living labour-power. The exchange-values generated exceed the worker's subsistence costs: "The property...which labour-power in action, living labour, possesses of preserving value, at the same time that it adds to it, is a gift of nature which costs the worker nothing, but is very advantageous to the capitalist since it preserves the existing value of his capital" (Marx, p.315). Negatively, Marx claims that no new value is added to the commodity by the constant capital per se. Since the means of production are not for sale but for use, we are dealing here with their use-values, which are transferred to commodities during production. Marx says, "The value of the means of production is...preserved by being transferred to the product" (Marx, p.307). It is preserved first as a use-value, since "if a use-value is effectively consumed in the production of a new use-value, the quantity of labour expended to produce the article which has been consumed forms a part of the quantity of labour necessary to produce the new use-value; this portion is therefore labour transferred from the means of production to the new product" (Marx, p.308). Dialectically, value is preserved by being transformed, as "means of production...lose in the labor process the original form of their use-value only to assume in the product the form of a new use-value" (Marx, p.310). The final product is treated by the capitalist as an exchange-value, just as it was money that he or she originally invested in means of production: "With regard to the three shillings which have been expended, the new value of three shillings appears merely as a reproduction" (Marx, p.316). For our purpose it is important to emphasize this unconditionality of the "pass-through" of use-value via constant capital. "Suppose," says Marx, "its use-value in the labour process lasts only six days. It then loses on average one-sixth of its use-value every day, and therefore parts with one-sixth of its value to each day's product" (Marx, p.312). Marx dogmatically asserts a sort of forced accounting identity to limit value added from constant capital to depreciation: "However useful a given kind of raw material, or a machine, or other means of production may be, even if it cost 150 pounds or, say, 500 days of labour, it cannot under any circumstances add more than 150 pounds to the value of the product. Its value is determined not by the labour process into which it enters as a means of production, but by that out of which it has issued as a product" (Marx, p.314). Although the use-value of constant capital is simply passed through to the product, technology certainly increases productivity. Marx asserts that "The value of commodities stands in inverse ratio to the productivity of labour" (Marx, p.436). "In general," he says, "the greater the productivity of labour, the less the labour-time required to produce an article, the less the mass of labour crystallized in that article, and the less its value" (Marx, p.131). Marx calls "that surplus-value which arises from a curtailment of the necessary labour-time..., relative surplus value" (Marx, p.432). It is a temporary effect of technological advance whereby "At first, the commodities produced under the new production process are distinguished by costing the capitalist less to produce than their real, social value However, the extra surplus-value gained by this capitalist vanishes when the new means of production are generalized" (Helburn, notes). In other words, under Marx's labor theory of value, the short term result of increasing constant capital is to benefit only the capitalist, and the long-term result is simply to lower the value of commodities. Marx showed that the increasing productivity of the agricultural and industrial revolutions failed to improve, indeed deteriorated, the lot of workers historically. He constructed a tautology making it impossible for machinery to augment value, and attributed any gains that might be made to variable-capital. EXCEPTIONS AND DIFFICULTIES WITH
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure
G'day Doug, Louis Proyect wrote: Actually most people value peace and health more than shopping at the malls and cancer. That is the reason drug use and prozac is so widespread in the USA. Beneath the "good life" there is a profound feeling of despair. ...but which can't get articulated as despair. I'd love a thread on what it could, or is being, articulated as, Doug! There's a radical nostalgia (radical insofar as the past is being made up rather than revisited) for a start. And the components with which they choose to fashion this past speak fairly eloquently, do they not? Only the lonely (dum dum dum dumdedo dah ...) would so bang on about community. Only the exhausted, for a slow-down. Only the rational aquisitor, for mutual trust. Only the efficiently home-drugged for the pub down the road. Only the corporate-institutionally marginalised for local institutions in which one could have a hand. Only the accumulation- or status-hungry for children (and I very deliberately include majorities on both sides of the sexual divide). Only the disillusioned for the Simpsons. Only the suits, for the messy loud colours that suddenly fill MTV clips and ads. Only the sex taker, for the by-the-numbers love makers Hollywood conjures in all those tedious 'romantic comedies'. Only the mass-culture victims of Spice Girls and Back Street Boys could put the Beatles back at the top of the charts. Only those at the right end of a permanent meaningless state of war, for the righteous carnage of Private Ryan. And only the meaning-deprived could laugh at Seinfeld yet miss Sid Caesar. Shit, only the cynical could yearn for mere scepticism. Sounds like articulated despair from here ... If I didn't think that your first sentence was fundamentally right, I wouldn't be a socialist. (I'll disagree on cancer - the reason ca's more prevalent is that people live longer, and capitalism has a lot to do with why people live longer.) Right as far as it goes, but a western/northern-centric perception, I suspect. But people formed in a society of shopping malls are attached to it in complicated ways that are hard to undo. (And lots of people who don't have malls want them.) We have to be careful here, Doug. I am most attached to and needful of cigarettes. I wasn't born with that, and it ain't good for me. Arguments that I live in a situation where tobacco constitutes a valid mode of self-medication are hard to reject, but that speaks to the radical scope of the problem. Which is that I need to smoke, and shouldn't need to smoke, and shouldn't smoke. And besides, shopping itself isn't evil, nor is wanting more things. Depends on what you have, and why you want it. And whether you could possibly gain as much gratification from the having of the thing when the thrill of aquisition is gone. Most people don't feel the mall despair you do. They feel versions of it. If the mall were convincingly associated with the their phobic objects, they might well feel such despair. Some miss their shopkeepers not knowing their names. Some miss a life that didn't depend on credit limits. Some miss casual meetings on the high street. Some miss finding their toddlers within minutes of losing them. Some miss finding their cars within days of leaving them. Some miss walking to the place they do their shopping and socialising. And some just miss owning the space between the shops. So how do you change their minds? Well, accumulated experience is doing some of the job, I reckon. I know plenty of people who hate malls. But not as much as I do. Cheers, Rob.
Re: Networked Intelligences (Re: Moral Panics / Law Order)
Hi Economist, and Low Economists, I want to extend my remarks on the metaphor Yoshie used to observe how I understand brain work goes on. This seems to me to be relevant to understanding how to organize in the left. I use the term networked to indicate aspects of the social organization. Yoshie used the metaphor of a panopticon. This is a stable product of her mind. Probably the best way to understand that is that within her brain there are places that contribute parts of the concept of the panopticon, this being mainly a visual image of a prison room with a guard tower in the center whose guards can't be seen by the prisoners. So some parts of the visual cortex contribute to this image for example. In terms of how Yoshie feels, probably this image feels pretty comfortable as a means of describing how surveillance instills fear in people to her mind. It doesn't work for me, but that is not my point here. Yoshie in the course of time produces a great many such concepts. Such metaphors are basic to human brain work. They are in language a representation of a melding of various functional centers of the neo cortex to produce an understanding. Yoshie is a more prolific worker on these e-lists than I am for example, and this sort of work is important. For example another highly productive brain worker here, Lou Proyect, will engage Yoshie on the level of many such metaphors. These engagements are about the stability of the structures in the metaphors. In other words Yoshie forms a metaphor in her neural networks, which lasts in time in long term memory. She feels it is stable concept she can use. Lou may question the stability of the metaphor. To use something we can understand better when it is not clear how stability is involved with this brain work, Suppose Doyle argued that the earth was flat, then Lou would challenge the stability of the metaphor. Doyle's neocortex clearly represents that metaphor, and Doyle feels (emotionally) that it is viable piece of his consciousness to share in the community. The metaphor is in fact not stable because reality comes to show us that the earth is not flat. And these are how brain work elements are shared within the community and then made more stable or demonstrated to be unstable and are let go of over time. Most of the work here is a large amount of production of metaphors as tools to use in human networks to proceed in doing conscious understanding of everyday life. There is a division of work, where Michael Perelman concerns himself with the mostly invisible aspect of how people feel about the brain work they are engaging in here. And then there is the less directly consequent upon emotional production, the main line of work here of producing metaphors that are useful in terms of a broad left perspective. People feel about these things also. That is important to keep in mind about any of this production, that we all use emotions as a way to hold a metaphor in place and use it with regard to speech in the community. But we do not concern ourselves directly with how this emotionally works in the sense that Michael does. We may not like what someone else says, but we don't have very basic tools to regulate the production of feelings that accompanies the metaphors being produced in large amounts of brain work. Michael can remove someone from the community, and this function directly affects emotional production in the way that the rest of us can't do. Let's look a bit at the networked aspect of this. When Yoshie puts out a metaphor, the panopticon, one important aspect of that is how a metaphor is taken up by others and also implemented. So that for example Jim Devine supported Yoshie by citing a use a police substation in a mall that mimics the concept of surveillance in the center of people activity. This is a clear way showing how a network of minds share a metaphor. It is stable for both Yoshie and Jim Devine. I mean stable in that both no doubt still feel the metaphor is perfectly adequate way of understanding what goes on in surveillance with respect to production of emotions. The networks here on e-lists perform two parts, the first as I describe above where a metaphor is put out into the community as a means to understand how things work. It is stable in that persons mind, and other people either learn that brain work or already share the basic premise. The second aspect of this is how within the community metaphor are placed into the public view and then the stability of the metaphor is questioned. One reason that a person like Yoshie is important is that a great deal of metaphor production, which is basic human brain work, offers a lot of resources to others. It is important that a network happens, so that it is important that say for example Jim Devine supports what Yoshie produced. Someone who simply writes and writes but no one listens to is not networked into the system and the brain work
Re: Ohmans on 'marginal' constant capital #1
" ... but doesn't the capitalist-entrepreneur deserve SOME remunerative "wage" for the effort, organizational talent, time, worry and risk he/she takes to establish the business that benefits the workers who are employed and society which gets to use the products of the business? why assume that ALL the M'-M is surplus labor value and hence "exploitative"?" Norman: this is a fundamental question, very important, the root of whether to be a socialist or not. Why don't you look at the first chapter of David Schweickart's book Against Capitalism, which offers a semi-technical (that is, technically informed but comprehensible to the laity) discussion that is as good as any I know. David'[ basic argument is that there is no capitalist contribution as such to reward. Capitalists perform a number of managerial, entrepreneurial, etc. functions, indeed, and these are socially necessary and worthy of reward. However, they do not perform these _as capitalists_, that is, as owners of the means of production and expropriators of surplus value (though David does not, you will be happy to hear, use any Marxist jargon). To see this, consider that workers could also and instead perform these functions: manage enterprises, seek out entreprenerial opportunities, take risks, etc. Nothing there requires that the people who do that own the means of production. In factr, in the modern corporation, by and large, the owners--the shareholders--don't do these things: they hire officers and directors to hire managers to do them. The remaining question is whether merely owning productive assets, as opposed to managing them or engaging in entrepreneurial activity, etc., is a socially valuable activity worthy of reward. And that is a amuch harder case to make. Certainly mere ownership doesn't create entitlements based on _desert_, becayse you have to have done something to deserve anything on the basis of it. And it's not evidsent that mere ownership contributes any marginal value to the social product. Check out Schweickaert and tell us what you think. --jks _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Re: Re: Ohmans on 'marginal' constant capital #1
There is an unclarity here that I should remove: when I said that workers could perform the positive functions that capitalsits perform (when capitalist perform any socially useful functions) wiuthout owning the means of production, I meant, without owning them individually rather than collectively. --jks Capitalists perform a number of managerial, entrepreneurial, etc. functions, indeed, and these are socially necessary and worthy of reward. However, they do not perform these _as capitalists_, that is, as owners of the means of production and expropriators of surplus value (though David does not, you will be happy to hear, use any Marxist jargon). To see this, consider that workers could also and instead perform these functions: manage enterprises, seek out entreprenerial opportunities, take risks, etc. Nothing there requires that the people who do that own the means of production. In factr, in the modern corporation, by and large, the owners--the shareholders--don't do these things: they hire officers and directors to hire managers to do them. The remaining question is whether merely owning productive assets, as opposed to managing them or engaging in entrepreneurial activity, etc., is a socially valuable activity worthy of reward. And that is a amuch harder case to make. Certainly mere ownership doesn't create entitlements based on _desert_, becayse you have to have done something to deserve anything on the basis of it. And it's not evidsent that mere ownership contributes any marginal value to the social product. Check out Schweickaert and tell us what you think. --jks _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com _ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
How we might live
From William Morris "How We Live and How We Might Live " How do we live, then, under our present system? Let us look at it a little. And first, please to understand that our present system of Society is based on a state of perpetual war. Do any of you think that this is as it should be? I know that you have often been told that the competition, which is at present the rule of all production, is a good thing, and stimulates the progress of the race; but the people who tell you this should call competition by its shorter name of war if they wish to be honest, and you would then be free to consider whether or no war stimulates progress, otherwise than as a mad bull chasing you over your own garden may do. War, or competition, whichever you please to call it, means at the best pursuing your own advantage at the cost of someone else's loss, and in the process of it you must not be sparing of destruction even of your own possessions, or you will certainly come by the worse in the struggle. You understand that perfectly as to the kind of war in which people go out to kill and be killed; that sort of war in which ships are commissioned, for instance, "to sink, burn, and destroy"; but it appears that you are not so conscious of this waste of goods when you are only carrying on that other war called commerce; observe, however, that the waste is there all the same... Well, surely Socialism can offer you something in the place of all that. It can; it can offer you peace and friendship instead of war. We might live utterly without national rivalries, acknowledging that while it is best for those who feel that they naturally form a community under one name to govern themselves, yet that no community in civilization should feel that it had interests opposed to any other, their economical condition being at any rate similar; so that any Citizen of one community could fall to work and live without disturbance of his life when he was in a foreign country, and would fit into his place quite naturally; so that all civilized nations would form one great community, agreeing together as to the kind and amount of production and distribution needed; working at such and such production where it could be best produced; avoiding waste by all means. Please to think of the amount of waste which they would avoid, how much such a revolution would add to the wealth of the world! What creature on earth would be harmed by such a revolution? Nay, would not everybody be the better for it? And what hinders it? I will tell you presently For what I want you to understand is this: that in every civilized country at least there is plenty for all--is, or at any rate might be. Even with labour so misdirected as it is at present, an equitable distribution of the wealth we have would make all people comparatively comfortable; but that is nothing to the wealth we might have if labour were not misdirected What is it that I need, therefore, which my surrounding circumstances can give me--my dealings with my fellow-men--setting aside inevitable accidents which cooperation and forethought cannot control, if there be such? Well, first of all I claim good health; and I say that a vast proportion of people in civilization scarcely even know what that means. To feel mere life a pleasure; to enjoy the moving one's limbs and exercising one's bodily powers; to play, as it were, with sun and wind and rain; to rejoice in satisfying the due bodily appetites of a human animal without fear of degradation or sense of wrongdoing; yes, and therewithal to be well-formed, straight-limbed, strongly knit, expressive of countenance--to be, in a word, beautiful--that also I claim. If we cannot have this claim satisfied, we are but poor creatures after all; and I claim it in the teeth of those terrible doctrines of asceticism, which, born of the despair of the oppressed and degraded, have been for so many ages used as instruments for the continuance of that oppression and degradation Now the next thing I claim is education. And you must not say that every English child is educated now; that sort of education will not answer my claim, though I cheerfully admit it is something: something, and yet after all only class education. What I claim is liberal education; opportunity, that is, to have my share of whatever knowledge there is in the world according to my capacity or bent of mind, historical or scientific; and also to have my share of skill of hand which is about in the world, either in the industrial handicrafts or in the fine arts; picture-painting, sculpture, music, acting, or the like: I claim to be taught, if I can be taught, more than one craft to exercise for the benefit of the community. You may think this a large claim, but I am clear it is not too large a claim if the community is to have any gain out of my special capacities, if we are not all to be beaten down to a dull level of mediocrity as we are now, all but the very strongest and toughest of us.
Re: Re: global warming talks failure
G'day Paul, About Jordan Wheeler's column, "Until environment affects profits, it won't be fixed" ... Beaut stuff, but problematic at a very profound level, I reckon. I think people of Marxian bent inherit from Das Kapital and its clerics an unconsciously impotent view of the world, by which I mean a rather structuralist view in which the subject is inexorable capital. As this dimension is precisely what is missing in latter day economics, more strength to its eye - but Marx's materialist conception of history won't hear of such a view as exhaustive analysis of our world. Das Kapital was just an enormous but partial expression of that! There is always already room for agency. Capitalism may be in charge, but its rule can never be complete. Even if we can't rid ourselves of its remorseless blind charge, we can fuck with it a little. Sure, capitalism expressed itself most cogently at The Hague last week, but even that sad moment (and no contribution to its sadness was more shameful than that played by the Australian government) is productive of contradictions. Popular opposition makes differences, and capital's base logic is continually confounded and thwarted by mass dissent. History is choc-a-bloc full of it! Sure, capital fixes (or capitalists try to fix) what its moment determines it should fix. Profits and shareholder value are big determinants of that, but we must never submit to the idea they are ever entirely determinant. It's all very well to keep our eyes on the stars, but cleaning the gutter in which we find ourselves is important, too. Otherwise, there's a good chance we soil it beyond tolerance before we get a chance at the pavement ... Tipsily and bed-bound, Rob.
jargon
[was: Re: [PEN-L:5045] Re: Ohmans on 'marginal' constant capital #1]
Justin writes:
Norman: this is a fundamental question [the remuneration of capitalist for
their alleged services], very important, the root of whether to be a
socialist or not. Why don't you look at the first chapter of David
Schweickart's book Against Capitalism, which offers a semi-technical (that
is, technically informed but comprehensible to the laity) discussion that
is as good as any I know. David'[ basic argument is that there is no
capitalist contribution as such to reward. Capitalists perform a number of
managerial, entrepreneurial, etc. functions, indeed, and these are
socially necessary and worthy of reward. However, they do not perform
these _as capitalists_, that is, as owners of the means of production and
expropriators of surplus value (though David does not, you will be happy
to hear, use any Marxist jargon).
Justin, what's wrong with Marxian jargon? should we reject all Marxian
jargon and stick to the currently-dominant jargons ("entrepreneurial,"
etc.)? should we also reject philosophical or legal jargon, or is your ire
simply aimed at that of Marx?
I'm all in favor of _clearly explained_ and coherent jargon, and I think
Marx provided one even if many of his followers don't. (Marx's _method of
presentation_ wasn't very good in CAPITAL, to my mind, but that's different
from issues of "jargon.") I think that his "jargon" (others would call it
"terminology") is totally consistent with the fact that he approached the
whole topic of political economy from a different angle than the vast
majority of its students. Because Marx treated capitalism as a totality --
which is what it is -- and dealt with the internal relationships of that
totality first and foremost before turning to the role of individuals
within the system (cf. Ollman's excellent book, ALIENATION), his "jargon"
hardly fits with the commonsensical jargon prevailing in an individualistic
society like that of the U.S. (and that intensely individualistic industry,
academia), where we all start with individual "atoms" and hope that they
can be added up to produce an understanding of the big picture.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure
Mike Lebowitz's book, BEYOND CAPITAL, deals with these issues of Marx's deterministic vision. In a nutshell, Marx deliberately minimized the role of the self-organization working class in CAPITAL, in order to focus on the contradictory dynamics of capital, which create conditions in which working-class resistance is encouraged and allowed to succeed. It's as if Hegel had written about the Master without the Servant playing an active role, since it leaves much that is important out of our picture of capitalism. Mike quotes a lot from Marx's other writings in order to develop a sketch of a "political economy of the working class" that complements Marx's "political economy of capital." Of course, it can also be seen in such summary analyses of Marx's political writings as Hal Draper's KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION. I should note, as I often do, that even Marx's political economy of capital (his analysis of its contradictory dynamics) is quite incomplete. At 03:29 AM 11/29/00 +1000, you wrote: G'day Paul, About Jordan Wheeler's column, "Until environment affects profits, it won't be fixed" ... Beaut stuff, but problematic at a very profound level, I reckon. I think people of Marxian bent inherit from Das Kapital and its clerics an unconsciously impotent view of the world, by which I mean a rather structuralist view in which the subject is inexorable capital. As this dimension is precisely what is missing in latter day economics, more strength to its eye - but Marx's materialist conception of history won't hear of such a view as exhaustive analysis of our world. Das Kapital was just an enormous but partial expression of that! There is always already room for agency. Capitalism may be in charge, but its rule can never be complete. Even if we can't rid ourselves of its remorseless blind charge, we can fuck with it a little. Sure, capitalism expressed itself most cogently at The Hague last week, but even that sad moment (and no contribution to its sadness was more shameful than that played by the Australian government) is productive of contradictions. Popular opposition makes differences, and capital's base logic is continually confounded and thwarted by mass dissent. History is choc-a-bloc full of it! Sure, capital fixes (or capitalists try to fix) what its moment determines it should fix. Profits and shareholder value are big determinants of that, but we must never submit to the idea they are ever entirely determinant. It's all very well to keep our eyes on the stars, but cleaning the gutter in which we find ourselves is important, too. Otherwise, there's a good chance we soil it beyond tolerance before we get a chance at the pavement ... Tipsily and bed-bound, Rob. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: jargon
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/28/00 11:38AM
Justin, what's wrong with Marxian jargon? should we reject all Marxian
jargon and stick to the currently-dominant jargons ("entrepreneurial,"
etc.)? should we also reject philosophical or legal jargon, or is your ire
simply aimed at that of Marx?
CB: Agree with Jim D. Calling Marx's technical terms "jargon" is somewhat like
referring to the technical terms of natural history or chemistry as "jargon".
A few years ago, the Michigan bar had some emphasis on "plain language". But that is
possible only up to a certain point, because some concepts in legalese have no exact
equivalent in common jargon.
Leftists should learn Marx's basic concepts and terminology as part of their
repertoire as professional revolutionaries.
global warming talks failure
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 11/28/00 11:48AM Mike Lebowitz's book, BEYOND CAPITAL, deals with these issues of Marx's deterministic vision. In a nutshell, Marx deliberately minimized the role of the self-organization working class in CAPITAL, in order to focus on the contradictory dynamics of capital, which create conditions in which working-class resistance is encouraged and allowed to succeed. It's as if Hegel had written about the Master without the Servant playing an active role, since it leaves much that is important out of our picture of capitalism. Mike quotes a lot from Marx's other writings in order to develop a sketch of a "political economy of the working class" that complements Marx's "political economy of capital." Of course, it can also be seen in such summary analyses of Marx's political writings as Hal Draper's KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION. I should note, as I often do, that even Marx's political economy of capital (his analysis of its contradictory dynamics) is quite incomplete. CB: I agree with Jim D. here, and I think it is important to think of _Capital_ in terms of the emphasis on capitalists or workers as subjects. I would say that upon doing this we do find the working class subject cunningly and in hidden ways in _Capital_. For example, the capitalist does not automatically or self-determinedly pay the workers the full value of their labor-power, as is a basic assumption in the models in _Capital_ . This level of pay only results from working class struggle and victories. Left to their own self-determination or subjectivity , individual capitalists would create various forms of oppressed or super-exploited labor, such as when capitalism had large sectors of slavery, or today with oppressed colonial labor, laborers not paid the full value of their labor power. Also, overall, since mastery of necessity or objective conditions is the way to freedom , freedom of the working class subject in this case, the key to freeing the working class as subject is for the working class to become conscious of and master/mistresss of the science of the capitalist subject , for the capitalist as subject creates the objective social conditions ,necessities, which the working class potential subject must master in order to be a realized subject. Also, we might take the discussion of the fetishism of commodities as a suggestion that negating the commodity fetishism of workers as a critical task for realizing their subjectivity.
Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure
Jim Devine wrote: Mike Lebowitz's book, BEYOND CAPITAL, deals with these issues of Marx's deterministic vision. While they have somewhat different agendas, and clash on some issues, Wood, Foster, and Harvey are all very good on the mixture of deterministic and non-deterministic elements in Marx's thought. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure
Peter, Thanks for the reference. There is nothing stopping a firm that owns the right to emit a certain amount of a given pollutant to emit less. But it cannot emit more. Ceiling implies a maximum above which one cannot go. A floor is a minimum below which one cannot go. Tradeable emissions permits schemes are merely systems of allocating the pieces of a ceiling, an allowable maximum of emissions of the pollutant in question over the zone of the artificial market. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, November 27, 2000 6:17 PM Subject: [PEN-L:5026] Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure Under traditional regulation, each polluter is supposed to limit pollution to some specified level. Some may find it feasible to cut pollution even more, so that the overall target (permitted pollution level times number of activities) serves as a ceiling. Under tradeable permits, all such gaps disappear (if the market functions as planned), so the actual pollution cannot be less than the target -- the target is a floor. I can't recall the history of the Japanese coastal management system; my reference is: David Fluharty, "The Chrysanthemum and the Coast: Management of Coastal Areas in Japan" (Coastal Zone Management Journal, 1984, 12[1]: 1-17) Peter "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Peter, No major disagreements with any of this. One point is that in the usual emissions trading schemes they are ceilings, not floors. The whole point is to have aggregate emissions not exceed some level. Who gets to do the emitting that adds up to that is then decided by trading among the relevant parties. Nobody is supposed to go above their allowable amounts, once those are determined. Your caveats are all reasonable, and I agree that Eban Goodstein's discussion is reasonable and thoughtful. I knew that the Japanese have some fairly successful cooperative coastal management schemes (despite their rapacious attitude towards fisheries outside their own waters). I did not know that these involved market trading mechanisms. When were these initially implemented? I also would have preferred to see Clinton make some kind of an agreement and then let the Congress shoot it down. The current situation is apalling. This is truly serious stuff and something needs to be done about it. I am holding my nose more than my breath at the prospect of what Texas Oil Man Bush will do, although, who knows? Barkley Rosser
Re: [Fwd: Re: on the American election - a query and a comment]
Carroll, Another way to put this is that Gore paid for Clinton's having done the right thing vis a vis Elian, despite Gore's own pathetic pander. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, November 27, 2000 6:59 PM Subject: [PEN-L:5028] [Fwd: Re: on the American election - a query and a comment] I love the growing list of betrayals of their base which led to the Democratic defeat. My favorite is the War on Crime and the denial of the vote to so many black men in Florida. But this tale runs a close second. Carrol Original Message Subject: Re: on the American election - a query and a comment Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 17:05:51 -0500 From: jonathan flanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED] I think we need to fight on THIS level also, and not REDUCE the issue to one of the undemocratic nature of the electoral college. I agree. Didn't mean to bend the stick that far. See below. Jon Flanders Gored in Miami The Elián brigade rises again and strong-arms the Miami-Dade canvassing board to halt the hand count that could put Al Gore in the White House. By Myra MacPherson Nov. 24, 2000 | Unfolding like a Greek tragedy, Al Gore's 11th-hour -- or rather, 13th-hour -- bid for the White House is not without a horrible irony for the vice president. The Gore team this week deplored the Miami mob that shouted, screamed and nearly shoved through the door of a government building -- thus succeeding by intimidation in halting the Miami-Dade County canvassing board's recount of crucial votes. Losing that recount in a county where a majority of the votes were expected to be favorable to Gore may well cost him the presidency. But guess who was among that crowd drummed up by the Republicans? The same Cuban-Americans whom Gore had tried so hard to woo by pandering to them over the fate of a little Cuban boy who washed up on Florida shores a year ago this week. Remember back that far? Rather than risk Cuban-American animus or votes -- a largely Republican vote to begin with -- Gore refused to support his own administration's position on the case. He would not say that the United States had the legal and moral authority to return Elián González to his father and, thus, Cuba, arguing instead that a state family court should make the decision. His statements backfired -- not only did they not attract the anti-Castro Cuban-American community to his banner, they alienated and enraged many members of Gore's hardcore Democratic base of non-Hispanics in bitterly divided South Florida. Some defected to Nader. Others sat out the campaign or voted halfheartedly rather than working to help elect him. Was Gore haunted by that waffling past this week when -- faster than you could say Elián -- Miami's Cuban-Americans answered the call from the right once more, this time dealing the vice president's candidacy what could be a mortal blow? They answered the call from the Republican Party, from the staunchly Republican Spanish station Radio Mambi, from U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtenin and Lincoln Diaz Balart -- the one who gave Elián a puppy, remember? They were asked to do what they do best -- protest, shout, raise a ruckus. Perhaps there were some leftover Elián signs they could have dusted off and used in the name of freedom. Though the counting officials caved, the Democrats didn't abandon their fight. Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo went on CNN to say that even though the Republicans can "bring in more thugs ... frighten them into submission the way they did in Miami-Dade," the Democrats would not give up the recount battle. And they have indicated their intention to contest the final vote tally from the county after the statewide election is certified. This sort of mob rule when it comes to anything related to Cuba is not mystifying to Miamians. They witnessed it well before Elián, when Cuban-American protesters marched, shouted obscenities and threw rocks at concert-goers who were simply trying to attend a performance by musicians visiting from Cuba. They have seen it when a museum exhibiting art from Cuba was threatened by a bomb and one painting was purchased by a Cuban-American for the sole privilege of burning it. They have seen it whenever an attempt has been made to stop the embargo and normalize relations with Cuba. But to those unfamiliar with the local scene, the situation is hard to understand. "It's unusual to see Republicans out there screaming and shouting," burbled one mystified bloviator on TV. This is not genteel Republicanism but the knock-down kind, borne of a suspicion and hatred of the Democratic Party since the days of JFK and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Although moderate and even Democratic voices have been heard in the Cuban-American community of late, the majority of the exiles and their families remain,
Re: jargon
I said:
(though David does not, you will be
happy
to hear, use any Marxist jargon).
Jim asks:
Justin, what's wrong with Marxian jargon? should we reject all Marxian
jargon and stick to the currently-dominant jargons ("entrepreneurial,"
etc.)? should we also reject philosophical or legal jargon, or is your ire
simply aimed at that of Marx?
No, I just thought that Norm in particular would prefer an explanation
unencumbered by jargon. I can sling the jargon myself as well as anyone,
better than some. I would prefer minimal jargon, philosophical, legal, or
Marxian in any event. If you can say what you mean in plain English prose,
why not do so?
--jks
_
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Japan's homeless
With Homeless Numbers Rising, Japan Takes Action By Doug Struck Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, November 28, 2000; 11:55 AM TOKYO, Nov. 28 - The Japanese government, recognizing that a decade-long economic slump has created a poor underclass, is moving to subsidize shelters for the homeless. Faced with the growing sprawl of makeshift shanties erected by the homeless in parks and public areas of Tokyo, Osaka and even rural areas, the national Ministry of Health and Welfare has offered to erect shelters and help local governments run them. "It's a growing problem. The longer these people stay on the streets, the more difficult it is for them to become independent again," said Hiroshi Namba, an official of the ministry's Welfare Department. Japan's economic stagnation has long perplexed analysts: despite successive years of negative or flat economic performance and historic high unemployment, there are few obvious signs of the social stress analysts expect. Two glaring exceptions to that are suicides, which have soared to more than three times the number of auto fatalities in the country, and the growing legions of homeless men and women sleeping on park benches and washing in public restrooms. The homeless problem is still small in comparison with the United States. An official estimate in October 1999 put the number of homeless here at about 20,000 (compared with 700,000 in the United States). But that estimate was 25 percent higher than the first such estimate done six months earlier, and the homeless are becoming a common sight in a country where just a few years ago it was rare to see a man or woman living on the street. In contrast to the homeless population in America, where alcoholism, drug abuse and psychological ills are quite high, experts here say a large proportion of homeless in Japan had steady jobs and stable lives until their companies went bankrupt or they lost their employment. Most acknowledge that the country's social safety nets, designed to help stereotypical families with homes for only short periods, have failed to catch these new homeless. "There are systems to help, but only if the people had joined and paid dues. Many did not," said Naoko Harita, who helps run Salvation Army assistance programs for the homeless in Tokyo. "A lot of these people feel stranded." The national government, hobbled by its regular economic forecasts that the stagnation - and perhaps the homeless problem - would end soon, has been slow to respond. Local governments typically have opened public buildings or short-term shelters during the cruelest weeks of winter. But they, too, have been reluctant to embrace longer-term solutions, and occasional proposals for more permanent shelters have met resistance from neighbors. "We think we need to establish shelters in a scale that would accommodate the 10,000 homeless people we have" in Osaka, where a port and day-labor market attract homeless from around Japan, said Ichiro Yoshiyama, an official of the public welfare bureau there. "But we do need to gain the understanding and cooperation of the residents. Obviously, this is a very difficult problem." The health ministry is proposing to erect prefabricated shelters that would remain for three to five years, Namba said. Local reports say the shelters may hold 1,000 homeless, but Namba said the size and number of shelters has not been decided. The government's slow response to the homeless may be in part because they still are unobtrusive. Most homeless in Japan would never consider begging; they build shacks in the corners of the parks, and keep their sites clean: only the laundry hung on fences draws attention to those who live there. "They are not a source of crime. They try to live very peacefully and try to be very clean," said Harita. "They know they have been allowed to put up their tents in public places, so they volunteer to clean up the area. There are unwritten rules they try to live with," she said. Many scrounge for cans or scrap to sell to recyclers, or take occasional day-jobs to get a little money. Soup kitchens are not common, but some organizations bring hot food to the parks on a regular basis. Harita says the government and volunteer help is not enough for the homeless. "I think it will probably be a long-term social problem," she said. "The general public and the administration have wanted to put these people out of sight. But living in parks and streets lacks a basic humanity." © 2000 The Washington Post Company Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure
Doug, This is one reason why I am in favor of various "flexible mechanisms" including a reasonably structured market mechanism. This is indeed a global problem and the issue is getting global emissions down. Therefore I have no problem with, for example, the US paying other countries to reduce their emissions. I would like to see the US reduce its emissions, but I fear that it is extremely unrealistic to see the US making the cuts to get where it is supposed to go on its own. Just won't happen (soccer moms won't vote for it, not mention West Virginia coal miners and Missouri autoworkers and Ohio steelworkers). But, clearly the US will have to make some cuts, and probably big enough ones to be unpleasant. I might even be willing to go along with this farcical bit of the US paying Russia and Ukraine for their offsets if that would bring about action that the US would participate in. But I fully agree that this ludicrous effort to claim existing US carbon sinks as offsets is, well, ludicrous. Again, the reports suggest that Clinton was backing off that at The Hague, but I don't think we have the answer on what really happened there yet. But, make no mistake, this is a lot more serious than most stuff going on out there. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, November 27, 2000 8:24 PM Subject: [PEN-L:5030] Re: Re: global warming talks failure Eugene Coyle wrote: I agree with Barkley that this is a frightening and urgent problem. My take is that Gore and Clinton haven't had and don't have a serious intention of doing anything about it, posture as Gore will. Well, it'd require massive changes in U.S. life just to get back to 1990 emissions levels, and Kyoto required us to get something like 7% below that, right? Can you imagine any scenario under which a U.S. politician would campaign for seriously reduced auto use, the banning of SUVs, and massive re-urbanization? A lot of lefties want to blame evil corporations for global warming, and while they're no angels, the real solution would mean profound changes in everyday life for almost all of us. How do we get there? Doug
Re: Re: global warming talks failure
Paul, Besides some companies like DuPont that figure they can make money in the anti-pollution biz, one major industry that is really pushing doing something about global warming is the insurance industry. They are scared blankety blank about the impact on properties due to rising ocean levels. Talk about catastrophic insurance! Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, November 27, 2000 9:07 PM Subject: [PEN-L:5032] Re: global warming talks failure From a column by Jordan Wheeler, a Cree Indian columnist with the Winnipeg Free Press, November 26, 2000. "Until environment affects profits, it won't be fixed" When I was a kid I knew an old woman who remembered life in the late 1800s. She once sat on the prairie with her grandmother as a buffalo heard roamed by. The herd was thick and it moved over the low, rolling hills like a vst blanket. Her grandother told her to look at this closely because it would be the last time she would ever see it. Within a couple of years, the buffalo were gone. The buffalo were destroyed to wipe out the food source of the Plains Indians. With their food (and clothing and shelter) source gone, it was easier to confine the Indians to reserves, thus opening up the land for settlers to cut the earth with plows and for miners to slice the moutains apart and dig for minerals. It was about economics. It was about money. It was about profit. Because of profit, the land changed -- money vs. the environment. . . . . The environment won't become an issue until big business sees its destruction cut into their profits. To ponder how that already manifests itself and what lies down the road is frightening. Polar ice chunks are melting; oxygen generators (known as forests) are dwindling (in Canada just as quickly as in Brazil); our fresh water supply is pretty much gone; toxins are are present and growing in the entire, global ecosystem, the ozone thins, the globe warms. No wonder we're in denial. My fear is that big business won't get it until tens or hundreds of millions die That, of course, will mean fewer consumers. Big business serves itself and politicians are at their beck and call. Tougher environmental regulations won't be legislated or enfoced until it becomes and economic necessity. So, if the environment is you main concern, it doesn't really matter who wins this [Canadian] election. Money remains the going concern at the expense of everything else. (full article not available on the Free Press Website.) Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba From: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] I find it curious that there is nearly zero discussion of what is to me the biggest news event of the moment, the failure of the global warming talks in The Hague. Michael P. and I have batted it about a bit, but that has been it. Part of it may be that it never had much publicity in the first place. The endless wranglings in Florida and the ongoing killings in Palestine have dominated the front pages, while (at least in the Washington Post), the global warming talks were relegated to the business section, although collapse of the talks did make the front page, lower half only. Another aspect is that the details of the positions taken in the talks seem to be very murky, as the discussion between me and Michael P. suggests. We know that the US wanted to count forests and fields as carbon sinks, but whether this was based on some not unreasonable measure of counting increases in those sinks against increases in emissions or some totally ridiculous proposal to simply take existing sinks and count them as offsets against increases in emissions, frankly I have not been able to figure out. Again, I am not against some kind of market mechanism for allocating the emission reductions, as long as it is reasonable and does not include nonsense like the US claiming credit for reductions in Russia and Ukraine due to their industrial depressions after paying them some money (which will probably end up in Swiss bank accounts anyway, if not in the pocket of Andrei Shleifer's wife). I should confess that my lack of opposition to market mechanisms may reflect the fact that I was involved in setting up the very first such mechanism ever put in place anywhere in the world. That was in Wisconsin in the mid-1970s on the Fox River for BOD, where there are a lot of pulp and paper mills. Without the mechanism there would have been a lot of layoffs in the industry. Indeed, I have yet to see anybody offer a critique of, for example, the SO2 scheme now in place in the US. Has worked better than forecast, although market schemes do have to be carefully constructed and can be messed up by monopoly power and other difficulties. But, if properly set up, can
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Peter, Thanks for the reference. There is nothing stopping a firm that owns the right to emit a certain amount of a given pollutant to emit less. No, but under a tradeable system the underpolluting firm sells its excess to another firm that "overpollutes". In principle, if all opportunities for profitable exchange are realized, aggregate pollution will not be below the target. But it cannot emit more. If the system is adhered to perfectly, which in general it won't be. This is why I would regard the target as, effectively, a floor. It is also true that there will be some pollution above allowable levels in a cc system, but these are typically offset by underpollution. To the extent that the cc system is enforced, it is effectively a ceiling. I'm not up on the latest in this field. Is there a general recognition of this floor-ceiling business? Peter
Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure
From an offlist discussion with Lou Proyect I would say that the big opening for Marxism here, aside from the general critique of profit-oriented firms driving things, is for how one determines the overall level of emissions. Although it was done through an international negotiation, good input from a global planner would sure be useful. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, November 28, 2000 11:33 AM Subject: [PEN-L:5048] Re: Re: global warming talks failure G'day Paul, About Jordan Wheeler's column, "Until environment affects profits, it won't be fixed" ... Beaut stuff, but problematic at a very profound level, I reckon. I think people of Marxian bent inherit from Das Kapital and its clerics an unconsciously impotent view of the world, by which I mean a rather structuralist view in which the subject is inexorable capital. As this dimension is precisely what is missing in latter day economics, more strength to its eye - but Marx's materialist conception of history won't hear of such a view as exhaustive analysis of our world. Das Kapital was just an enormous but partial expression of that! There is always already room for agency. Capitalism may be in charge, but its rule can never be complete. Even if we can't rid ourselves of its remorseless blind charge, we can fuck with it a little. Sure, capitalism expressed itself most cogently at The Hague last week, but even that sad moment (and no contribution to its sadness was more shameful than that played by the Australian government) is productive of contradictions. Popular opposition makes differences, and capital's base logic is continually confounded and thwarted by mass dissent. History is choc-a-bloc full of it! Sure, capital fixes (or capitalists try to fix) what its moment determines it should fix. Profits and shareholder value are big determinants of that, but we must never submit to the idea they are ever entirely determinant. It's all very well to keep our eyes on the stars, but cleaning the gutter in which we find ourselves is important, too. Otherwise, there's a good chance we soil it beyond tolerance before we get a chance at the pavement ... Tipsily and bed-bound, Rob.
Re: jargon
- Original Message -
From: "Justin Schwartz" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jim asks:
Justin, what's wrong with Marxian jargon? should we reject all Marxian
jargon and stick to the currently-dominant jargons ("entrepreneurial,"
etc.)? should we also reject philosophical or legal jargon, or is your ire
simply aimed at that of Marx?
-No, I just thought that Norm in particular would prefer an explanation
-unencumbered by jargon. I can sling the jargon myself as well as anyone,
-better than some. I would prefer minimal jargon, philosophical, legal, or
-Marxian in any event. If you can say what you mean in plain English prose,
-why not do so?
The point of language is to convey ideas and increase understanding. In a
general discussion with many nonspecialist listening, jargon is elitist and
ultimately does not serve increased precision and understanding of the
audience. Where the audience are all specialists who understand the jargon,
such specialized terms increase the efficiency of conversation and precision
of discussion.
The acceptability of jargon is all about context - repulsive in some
settings, required and to be applauded in others.
The rule is to be understood. What language to use depends only on that
goal.
-- Nathan Newman
Re: Re: The exchange value of forests
Chris, I'm not sure what the issue is here. I think the issue is reducing aggregate global emissions. I think that net changes in carbon sinks, including their removal, should be counted. I am also willing to see rich countries pay poor countries to reduce emissions. Frankly, I don't give a damn how it gets done, just that it is. Of course it will have to be sold to a lot of people, including not only Prescott and Voynet, but Trittin and (unfortunately) Trent Lott. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, November 28, 2000 3:17 AM Subject: [PEN-L:5039] Re: The exchange value of forests In theoretical terms you both seem to be saying that the concept of credits and making charges can work progressively but they should be related to new capitalist activity, not virgin land that has been capitalised, ie seen as a privately owned resource, and an asset equivalent of capital. It could be argued that this interpretation would slightly advantage living labour compared to dead labour. I suspect there may be other pitfalls about how such an apparently equal rule would work out in a very unequal world. It might give further advantages to the capital intensive countries who could invest in more productive means of production that would benefit carbon emission control. (That is of course one of the aims.) Whether John Prescott and Dominique Voynet would be prepared to think this through is another matter. Chris Burford London At 18:00 26/11/00 -0500, you wrote: Michael, I would agree. The issue seems to me giving credit or making charges for any net changes in CO2 generation. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, November 26, 2000 5:40 PM Subject: [PEN-L:4987] Re: Re: The exchange value of forests Fine, if you want to give credit for sinks, then charge for policies that reduce sinks, such as building on farmland or cutting down forests. On Sun, Nov 26, 2000 at 05:14:48PM -0500, J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote: I would say that there is nothing wrong with giving credit for carbon sinks. But, they should not be given for existing carbon sinks but rather for newly created ones. So, if the US, or anybody else, plants new forests, then give them credit.
(no subject)
BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2000: A new study of Internet use by job seekers shows that in 1998, about 15 percent of all unemployed people actively looking for new jobs turned to various World Wide Web sites in conducting their search. About 7 percent of employed persons had used the Internet to look for a new job in 1998, a higher proportion than shown in earlier studies of traditional job-search methods, according to economists Peter Kuhn and Mikal Skuterud in an article published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The economists find little impact so far of increasing use of the Internet on public employment agencies (Daily Labor Report, page A-3. Text of the article, "Job Search Methods: Internet vs. Traditional", from the October 2000 issue of BLS's "Monthly Labor Review" is on page E-1. Kuhn is described as professor of economics, Department of Economics, University of California at Santa Barbara. Skuterud is described as a graduate student, Department of Economics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada). Employees can look forward to about as much paid time off this Christmas and New Year's season as last, according to the Bureau of National Affairs' latest annual survey of year-end holiday plans. Almost half of the responding employers (49 percent) will grant 3 or more paid days off for the holiday season this year, little changed from 50 percent in 1999-2000, when the national holidays fell on Saturdays, and slightly more than the 47 percent of employers in 1995-96, when Christmas and New Year's landed on Mondays. Employers' holiday scheduling continues to be slightly more conservative than a decade ago, when, in 1989-90, a year when the national holidays also fell on Monday, 6 out of 10 firms gave workers at least 3 paid days (Daily Labor Report, page B-1). "While doing research on teenagers a few years ago, I left a question on an Internet message board, asking young people who work about their on-the-job experiences. The replies were overwhelmingly positive," writes Thomas Hine, author of "The rise and Fall of the American Teenager" recently published by HarperPerennial, in The Washington Post (November 26, page B5). But the arrangement has less appealing and sometimes serious consequences, which even the most enthusiastic student workers and their parents should consider, Hine continues. These young people come largely from families with middle class incomes or better, in which parents make few demands on their children's earnings. But these high school students are putting in long part-time hours and constitute a distinct American working class, one that receives low wages and few benefits. According to a 1999 study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly a quarter of 14-year-olds and 38 percent of 15-year-olds have regular scheduled employment (as opposed to casual baby-sitting or yard work) during the school year. By the time they are seniors, another BLS study found, 73 percent of young people work at least part of the school year. A few of these young people, the ones who get featured in news stories, are making good money in challenging high-tech and Internet jobs. But the great majority are working for low wages, doing just about what you would expect. The top three jobs for boys, according to BLS, are cook, janitor and food preparers. For girls, they are cashier, waitress, and office clerk. These jobs may help teens understand the value of work, but they have little intellectual content, with electronic cash registers and scanners, even cashiers hardly have to deal with numbers. The average employed American high school student works 17 hours at week during the academic year. (Partly because of the proximity of jobs, the students who work the most tend to come from higher-income areas). During the holiday season, many young people find themselves under pressure from their supervisors to work extra hours. And since school vacations don't start until the shopping season is nearly over, many students will be juggling final exams, term papers, and a heavier work schedule. As the ranks of the rich grow, the business of "wealth management" is reaping huge rewards, with fat fees and loyal customers, says The Washington Post (November 26, page H1). The nation's 18.4 million affluent households -- defined as those with an annual income of $100,000 or with a net work of at least $500,000, not including primary residence -- control 80 percent, or $14.6 trillion of the estimated $18.1 trillion in investable assets in the country, according to the Spectrem Group, a research and consulting firm specializing in affluent markets. Millionaires, a subset of the affluent group, have more than doubled in the United States since 1994, to more than 7 million households, according to Spectrem. And "pentamillionaires," the name bankers give to those with net worth of at least $5 million,
Chrysler's latest
Kerkorian sues DaimlerChrysler for $9 billion Busting up company unlikely By Bill Vlasic, and Mark Truby / The Detroit News DETROIT -- Can Kirk Kerkorian break up the biggest deal in auto history? Not likely, say legal experts and analysts who reacted Monday to the billionaire investor's $9-billion lawsuit against DaimlerChrysler AG. "The courts would be hesitant to separate the company," said Harvey Goldschmid, former general counsel of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "Even if the claims are valid, (Kerkorian) can be provided with monetary relief." But the mega-lawsuit could prove thorny for DaimlerChrysler Chairman Juergen Schrempp, who recently admitted that the takeover of Chrysler Corp. in 1998 was falsely billed as a merger of equals. "This lawsuit is something DaimlerChrysler will have to take seriously because of the rather unfortunate admission by Schrempp," said Adam Pritchard, a law professor at the University of Michigan. Overturning the deal, however, may not be Kerkorian's goal. Pritchard wondered whether Kerkorian may try to buy Chrysler, as he unsuccessfully attempted to do in 1995. Wall Street analysts speculated that the casino tycoon simply wants to recoup the cash he's lost on DaimlerChrysler's dismal stock. "Kerkorian has lost a lot of money on this stock," said David Healy, an auto analyst with Burnham Securities. "He's at the point where he wants some of that money back."
Canadian Election Results..
Here are the results of the Canadian Federal election yesterday: Liberals 173 Alliance 66 Bloc Quebecois 37 Conservatives 12 New Democratic Party 13. The Liberals gained 18 seats, the Alliance 8. The Bloc have 7 fewer seats. The Conservatives have almost half as many as before, and the NDP has six less seats. The voter turnout was 63%...low for Canada. THe right-wing Alliance captured a strong protest vote in the West but captured ony two seats east of Manitoba. All parties retained party status by electing at least 12. The Bloc runs only in Quebec. The Liberals gained quite a few seats there. Cheers, Ken Hanly.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure
Peter, I think this is sort of a sideshow, but I still do not follow (or accept) your argument. The "excess" that a company sells is the amount that it is (or plans to be actually) below its allowable amount. Once it sells that it cannot go above its now lower allowable amount. Certainly the other firm can "overpollute" relative to its old allowable amount. But neither is supposed to go above their new allowable amounts which should sum to overall allowed amount. It is a ceiling. Now, you have introduced another wiggle here with the claim that firms are less likely to go over their allowable amounts in a cc system than in a tradeable permits system. Why should that be? I do not see why. In both cases there is a maximum allowable amount, although that may change for a particular firm in the tradeable permits scheme. If firms face equal punishments under each scheme for going over their allowable amounts, why should they behave differently under the two schemes? Furthermore, why would firms be more likely to go under their allowable amount in a cc scheme than in a tradeable permits scheme? After all, firms only sell excess they are reasonably certain they won't experience. In fact, they are likely to be below that. Finally, even if you can prove the argument, which maybe you can, that there will be more emissions with a tradeable permits scheme than with a strict quantity standard scheme (with the same aggregate emissions allowed), it remains the case that under both schemes it is illegal for any firm to go above its allowable limits however defined, but that it can certainly go below them. Thus, they are both ceilings and not floors, at least in principle, even if they are violated in practice, which is possible for both. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, November 28, 2000 3:42 PM Subject: [PEN-L:5061] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Peter, Thanks for the reference. There is nothing stopping a firm that owns the right to emit a certain amount of a given pollutant to emit less. No, but under a tradeable system the underpolluting firm sells its excess to another firm that "overpollutes". In principle, if all opportunities for profitable exchange are realized, aggregate pollution will not be below the target. But it cannot emit more. If the system is adhered to perfectly, which in general it won't be. This is why I would regard the target as, effectively, a floor. It is also true that there will be some pollution above allowable levels in a cc system, but these are typically offset by underpollution. To the extent that the cc system is enforced, it is effectively a ceiling. I'm not up on the latest in this field. Is there a general recognition of this floor-ceiling business? Peter
Re: Re: jargon
At 07:00 PM 11/28/00 +, you wrote: If you can say what you mean in plain English prose, why not do so? such artifices would be nugatory if performed by the current author. (actually, that's not jargon at all. But it's academic style blather.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Canadian Election Results..
Without implying any crass parliamentarism or tailism behind any political party, what is good and what is problematic about these results? (I mean in terms of things like shifting the terrain of struggle onto more progressive issues, making it easier for the majority of working people to struggle for control of their economic and political lives, including the safety of the environment.) Chris Burford London At 16:52 28/11/00 -0600, you wrote: Here are the results of the Canadian Federal election yesterday: Liberals 173 Alliance 66 Bloc Quebecois 37 Conservatives 12 New Democratic Party 13. The Liberals gained 18 seats, the Alliance 8. The Bloc have 7 fewer seats. The Conservatives have almost half as many as before, and the NDP has six less seats. The voter turnout was 63%...low for Canada. THe right-wing Alliance captured a strong protest vote in the West but captured ony two seats east of Manitoba. All parties retained party status by electing at least 12. The Bloc runs only in Quebec. The Liberals gained quite a few seats there. Cheers, Ken Hanly.
Re: Re: global warming talks failure
My hunch is that no one else on pen-l cares about this other than you or I, Barkley. We can take it up over a drink in New Orleans. Enough drinks and I'm sure you'll see it my way. Peter "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Peter, I think this is sort of a sideshow, but I still do not follow (or accept) your argument. The "excess" that a company sells is the amount that it is (or plans to be actually) below its allowable amount. Once it sells that it cannot go above its now lower allowable amount. Certainly the other firm can "overpollute" relative to its old allowable amount. But neither is supposed to go above their new allowable amounts which should sum to overall allowed amount. It is a ceiling. Now, you have introduced another wiggle here with the claim that firms are less likely to go over their allowable amounts in a cc system than in a tradeable permits system. Why should that be? I do not see why. In both cases there is a maximum allowable amount, although that may change for a particular firm in the tradeable permits scheme. If firms face equal punishments under each scheme for going over their allowable amounts, why should they behave differently under the two schemes? Furthermore, why would firms be more likely to go under their allowable amount in a cc scheme than in a tradeable permits scheme? After all, firms only sell excess they are reasonably certain they won't experience. In fact, they are likely to be below that. Finally, even if you can prove the argument, which maybe you can, that there will be more emissions with a tradeable permits scheme than with a strict quantity standard scheme (with the same aggregate emissions allowed), it remains the case that under both schemes it is illegal for any firm to go above its allowable limits however defined, but that it can certainly go below them. Thus, they are both ceilings and not floors, at least in principle, even if they are violated in practice, which is possible for both. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, November 28, 2000 3:42 PM Subject: [PEN-L:5061] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Peter, Thanks for the reference. There is nothing stopping a firm that owns the right to emit a certain amount of a given pollutant to emit less. No, but under a tradeable system the underpolluting firm sells its excess to another firm that "overpollutes". In principle, if all opportunities for profitable exchange are realized, aggregate pollution will not be below the target. But it cannot emit more. If the system is adhered to perfectly, which in general it won't be. This is why I would regard the target as, effectively, a floor. It is also true that there will be some pollution above allowable levels in a cc system, but these are typically offset by underpollution. To the extent that the cc system is enforced, it is effectively a ceiling. I'm not up on the latest in this field. Is there a general recognition of this floor-ceiling business? Peter
RE: Re: Re: global warming talks failure
One or two should do it. mbs My hunch is that no one else on pen-l cares about this other than you or I, Barkley. We can take it up over a drink in New Orleans. Enough drinks and I'm sure you'll see it my way. Peter
RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: global warming talks failure
Jr. Peter, Thanks for the reference. There is nothing stopping a firm that owns the right to emit a certain amount of a given pollutant to emit less. But it cannot emit more. Ceiling implies a maximum above which one cannot go. A floor is a minimum below which one cannot go. Tradeable emissions permits schemes are merely systems of allocating the pieces of a ceiling, an allowable maximum of emissions of the pollutant in question over the zone of the artificial market. Barkley Rosser *** What if, once a firm lowers it's "share" of the pollutant and then sells it off to the state --allow the state to be a buyer -- rather than another firm, the size of the pieces [number of credits available to buy and sell] of the ceiling are lowered thus raising the price for those who need to buy because they are remiss in attempting to lower their emissions? Each firm would have the option of selling to another firm or the state. Over time the total number of credits available diminishes, as does the height of the ceiling. The cost of overpolluting rises over time and the profitability of innovation could possibly increase too. Peter D.No, but under a tradeable system the underpolluting firm sells its excess to another firm that "overpollutes". In principle, if all opportunities for profitable exchange are realized, aggregate pollution will not be below the target. *** Create a rule that only allows firms to sell to other firms that are lowering their ceilings too, just at a slower rate [or sell the credits back to the state]. In short have the "master" rate set by the state [as it buys the credits back] or by the firm that underpollutes the fastest, that is, a rate lowering scheme set by the fastest innovator. Does this make sense or am I totally off base? Ian BTW went to a press conference in downtown Seattle [WTO anniversary and all that] and heard a fisheries economist state that best estimates indicate 20-25 years for the planet's open waters fisheries before utter collapse :-(
Racial Profiling in New Jersey: 8 out of 10 Automobile Searcheson Blacks Latinos
The New York Times November 28, 2000, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 2; Metropolitan Desk HEADLINE: RACIAL PROFILING WAS THE ROUTINE, NEW JERSEY FINDS BYLINE: By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI and ROBERT HANLEY DATELINE: TRENTON, Nov. 27 At least 8 of every 10 automobile searches carried out by state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike over most of the last decade were conducted on vehicles driven by blacks and Hispanics, state documents have revealed. Those figures, contained in 91,000 pages of internal state records distributed today by the state attorney general's office, showed that a systematic process of racial profiling became a routine part of state police operations, Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. said. The documents released by Mr. Farmer were among those being sought by lawyers representing minority drivers who are suing the state, claiming racial discrimination. Mr. Farmer explained that the practice of singling out black and Hispanic drivers evolved as part of the drug war of the mid-1980's, when the federal Drug Enforcement Administration began asking local police forces to intercept drug traffickers on major highways. Mr. Farmer said the policy had some success as a crime-fighting tool. He said 30 percent of the searches on the turnpike turned up some kind of contraband, while 70 percent turned up nothing improper. But even as such race-based tactics helped the New Jersey State Police arrest thousands of drug smugglers, the agency's methods inflicted a terrible price on the state's minority residents, Mr. Farmer said, as troopers discriminated against thousands of black and Hispanic drivers who were stopped and searched solely because of their skin color. "The effect of that kind of ratio over 10 years is devastating," Mr. Farmer said. "This may have been effective in law enforcement terms, but as social policy it was a disaster." Mr. Farmer, who became attorney general 17 months ago, said he was releasing the documents as a way to "pay a debt to the past" and try to rebuild public confidence in the force. But he also defended the actions of previous attorneys general, saying that the law regarding profiling was muddled, and that many of the drug interdiction policies that encouraged profiling were taught by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the federal Department of Transportation. Even today, Mr. Farmer said, case law conflicts on when it is permissible for an officer to consider race in deciding to stop a driver. He praised Gov. Christie Whitman for making New Jersey the first state to take sweeping measures to stop racial profiling. Mr. Farmer's remarks and the release of the documents did little to quiet many civil rights activists, however. The Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, executive director of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey, said the Whitman administration ignored complaints for years, and acted only after three unarmed minority men were shot by two troopers on the turnpike in April 1998. He called for a change in the State Constitution to make the attorney general's office an elected one. Under the state's current Constitution, adopted in 1947, the attorney general is appointed by the governor. "Right now, the attorney general is not going to do anything that the person who appointed him is opposed to," Mr. Jackson said. "He is not the people's lawyer; he is the governor's lawyer. Who do the people go to?" And the documents are also likely to intensify the criticism of one of the governor's longtime political allies, Justice Peter G. Verniero of the State Supreme Court, who was attorney general from 1996 to 1998. During public hearings before his confirmation to the state's high court in 1999, Mr. Verniero testified that he had no detailed knowledge of any statistical evidence of profiling until the attorney general's office conducted its own review of the state police in 1999. But one memo from an assistant attorney general to Mr. Verniero, dated July 29, 1997, included an audit of the Moorestown barracks, which had been the subject of repeated complaints of racial profiling. The audit showed that blacks and Hispanics, who make up 13.5 percent of the drivers on the turnpike, accounted for more than 33 percent of the traffic stops. During his sworn testimony before the State Senate, Mr. Verniero also insisted that he had worked in cooperation with the United States Department of Justice, which was conducting a civil rights investigation of the profiling allegations. But a memo from a meeting on May 20, 1997, at which Mr. Verniero and his assistants discussed their response to the federal investigation, also contains handwritten notes that indicate that Mr. Verniero was adamantly opposed to entering into a consent decree and allowing a federal monitor to oversee the department. The notes, which are believed to have been written by an assistant attorney general, say
Re: global warming talks failure
Lisa Ian Murray wrote: What if, once a firm lowers it's "share" of the pollutant and then sells it off to the state --allow the state to be a buyer -- rather than another firm, the size of the pieces [number of credits available to buy and sell] of the ceiling are lowered thus raising the price for those who need to buy because they are remiss in attempting to lower their emissions? Each firm would have the option of selling to another firm or the state. Over time the total number of credits available diminishes, as does the height of the ceiling. The cost of overpolluting rises over time and the profitability of innovation could possibly increase too. The problem is that it transfers to the state the cost of reducing the target. At the margin, this is the same as the sort of "takings" compensation the Right demands and was passed by initiative in Oregon this fall. It is as if polluters had the right to pollute and we, the polluted, have the obligation to bribe them not to. Create a rule that only allows firms to sell to other firms that are lowering their ceilings too, just at a slower rate [or sell the credits back to the state]. In short have the "master" rate set by the state [as it buys the credits back] or by the firm that underpollutes the fastest, that is, a rate lowering scheme set by the fastest innovator. Does this make sense or am I totally off base? Ian Is this any different from setting progressively more stringent targets from period to period? Peter
Re: global warming talks failure
The center of the scan is to go to a failed Ukranian or Russian business, which used to burn coal and buy their pollution rights. Or claim that a generator that uses natural gas is reducing CO2 by not using coal. Lisa Ian Murray wrote: Jr. Peter, Thanks for the reference. There is nothing stopping a firm that owns the right to emit a certain amount of a given pollutant to emit less. But it cannot emit more. Ceiling implies a maximum above which one cannot go. A floor is a minimum below which one cannot go. Tradeable emissions permits schemes are merely systems of allocating the pieces of a ceiling, an allowable maximum of emissions of the pollutant in question over the zone of the artificial market. Barkley Rosser *** What if, once a firm lowers it's "share" of the pollutant and then sells it off to the state --allow the state to be a buyer -- rather than another firm, the size of the pieces [number of credits available to buy and sell] of the ceiling are lowered thus raising the price for those who need to buy because they are remiss in attempting to lower their emissions? Each firm would have the option of selling to another firm or the state. Over time the total number of credits available diminishes, as does the height of the ceiling. The cost of overpolluting rises over time and the profitability of innovation could possibly increase too. Peter D.No, but under a tradeable system the underpolluting firm sells its excess to another firm that "overpollutes". In principle, if all opportunities for profitable exchange are realized, aggregate pollution will not be below the target. *** Create a rule that only allows firms to sell to other firms that are lowering their ceilings too, just at a slower rate [or sell the credits back to the state]. In short have the "master" rate set by the state [as it buys the credits back] or by the firm that underpollutes the fastest, that is, a rate lowering scheme set by the fastest innovator. Does this make sense or am I totally off base? Ian BTW went to a press conference in downtown Seattle [WTO anniversary and all that] and heard a fisheries economist state that best estimates indicate 20-25 years for the planet's open waters fisheries before utter collapse :-( -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: People's theories of how the economy works
I spoke on a less abstract level. I do not recall many people referring to Marxist categories in their questions. charlie wrote: People do have theories of the economy that guide their understanding, although they might not be highly conscious of the theory. A couple of weeks ago I spoke at the Marxist School of Sacramento to an audience of people who are aware of their theory. In the discussion, the main tenets with which many of them explained economic events came from Baran and Sweezy's Monopoly Capital, and the operational conclusions leaned more on ideas of monopoly than of capital. Michael also spoke there; perhaps he noticed something similar or different. Charles Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web site for my book From Capitalism to Equality is at http://www.LaborRepublic.org -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: global warming talks failure
PD The problem is that it transfers to the state the cost of reducing the target. At the margin, this is the same as the sort of "takings" compensation the Right demands and was passed by initiative in Oregon this fall. It is as if polluters had the right to pollute and we, the polluted, have the obligation to bribe them not to. ** The state always has the option of not buying. By default, they currently do have the right to pollute and indifference to the problem is incredibly path dependent. I mentioned my thoughts only in the context of the credit scheme, not it's many limitations. Create a rule that only allows firms to sell to other firms that are lowering their ceilings too, just at a slower rate [or sell the credits back to the state]. In short have the "master" rate set by the state [as it buys the credits back] or by the firm that underpollutes the fastest, that is, a rate lowering scheme set by the fastest innovator. Does this make sense or am I totally off base? Ian Is this any different from setting progressively more stringent targets from period to period? Peter *** If we could show that the two schemes are formally equivalent in terms of costs for achieving the goals then, to the extent the credit scheme appears more voluntaristic, polluters can keep their market mythology. If we set stringent targets that do as you say, how do we avoid the costs of litigating enforcement and the perpetuation of the greenwashing backlash against "command and control" bureaucrats. For the corps. litigating is usually cheaper than compliance, if it weren't, what would be the point of the fines for non-compliance? Ian
TA strike at University of Washington
http://www.unionrecord.com/metro/display.php?ID=325 Metro Seattle 2000-11-28 UW teaching assistants plan to strike Monday By Ruth Schubert Seattle Union Record Hundreds of teaching assistants at the University of Washington plan to go on strike Monday morning over the administrations refusal to voluntarily recognize their union. The timing of the strike could wreak havoc during final exams, Dec. 7-14, and some grades would likely be late if professors have to grade the piles of exams and papers the teaching assistants (TAs) would normally take care of. Last year, teaching assistants at the UW taught 63 percent of lower-division courses and 18.5 percent of all undergraduate courses. In preparing for the strike viewed as inevitable in recent weeks UW President Richard McCormick has vowed to "hold students as harmless as possible." Plans include sending letters out with transcripts that dont meet graduate-school application deadlines, blaming the strike. In a recent letter to deans and department chairs, McCormick and UW Provost Lee Huntsman urged faculty to consider making alternative arrangements for proctoring exams, create alternative forms of examinations and identify and help students who have particularly urgent deadlines for receipt of their grades, among other suggestions. But while theyre not looking to hurt undergraduates, the TAs say the impact they can make during finals week is worth any potential inconvenience to the students. "Were looking out for the broader picture of education," said Melissa Meade, a graduate student in communications and a member of the union, the Graduate Student Employees Action Coalition/United Auto Workers (GSEAC). "We really think by gaining bargaining rights it will better our working conditions, which will better learning conditions." Many students support the strike at this time, despite the disruption it would cause in their classes. "I think its smart to do it at the end, because it makes it clear to the college that we are vital to the school," said Jan Rasmussen, a junior majoring in womens studies who has both a final paper and a final exam due in the coming two weeks. As recently as a month ago, UW administrators argued that a union would harm the mentoring relationship between graduate students and their professors. After a series of discussions between the administration and the TAs, however, both sides see a TA union in the universitys future. The only question is when. "The trend toward unionization of teaching assistants is nationwide," McCormick said. "My own prediction is their recognition for collective bargaining will happen, and will happen in the near future." McCormick, however, is holding out for so-called "enabling legislation," a bill passed by the state legislature that would define who is in the union, delineate what issues are subject to collective bargaining and recognize GSEAC as the sole TA union on campus. The UW now negotiates with 33 unions on campus, and all of them have enabling legislation. "Enabling legislation is the way its done in this state," McCormick said. The TAs, however, maintain that theres no reason to wait. "We see that as a stalling tactic, basically," Meade said. "We think if you re going to sit down with the union, why not do it now?" GSEAC has lined up support from other unions as well as the UW Faculty Senate. On Nov. 14, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution to "urge the administration and/or the Board of Regents to commence bargaining with GSEAC/UAW." Metro bus drivers already have said they wont drive buses onto campus in the event of a strike, Meade said. The King County Labor Council also pledged support. GSEAC represents about 1,350 teaching assistants, tutors and graders across the university. Most of the TAs work about 20 hours a week and earn $1,212 to $1,393 a month in a financial-aid package that also includes health-care benefits and full tuition waivers. Graduate tuition is $5,191 per year for Washington residents, $13,404 per year for nonresidents. After a card-signing campaign last spring, GSEAC affiliated with the United Auto Workers, which represents teaching assistants at about 20 schools, including the mammoth University of California. In early November, GSEAC members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, with a final tally of 984-164. When shes not on strike, Ruth Schubert covers higher education for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
'Free' East Timor
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 17:53:19 +1300 From: Philip Ferguson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 'Free' East Timor The following article appeared in the Australian magazine 'Socialist Alternative' #45, September 2000. John Howard and the media haven't let up about how wonderfully East Timor is progressing as an independent country and how proud we should all be of Australian troops in East Timor. According to their logic, the struggles of East Timorese people are all over, and the United Nations transitional government is to be congratulated. This report from Kate Habgood, working with students in East Timor, demonstrates how far these claims are from the truth. After fighting off 500 years of Portuguese colonialism and 25 years of Indonesian colonialism, East Timorese are once again second-class citizens in their own country. Nine months after the arrival of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), East Timor is widely regarded here as the UN's greatest failure yet. A colossal, top-heavy bureaucracy sits on the harbour in Dili. The head of the administration, Sergio Vieira de Mello, has sweeping powers which effectively make him an autocrat. It wasn't long before students re-named one branch of the UN's tentacles, the National Consultative Council, "Nepotisme, Collusi, Corrupsi", recognising that the NCC's job was to approve every decision made by the UN and that it worked only in the interests of its members. Protests against UNTAET came to a head in April. The central focus was the lack of job opportunities for Timorese, but also about the fact that, six months after UNTAET's arrival, Dili still consisted of piles of rubble and blackened structures. The UN responded with reams of propaganda about how only private and foreign investment could rebuild the nation, and the biggest danger was of producing a civil service on the scale of Indonesia's. One particularly lovely example was an article in their newspaper about a good bloke called Eddie Taylor, who out of the goodness of his heart came from Bali to assist with the rebuilding. Eddie employs dozens of local staff in his construction company, restaurant and god knows what else. His restaurant, phil's grill, sits near the airport. International staff can drink $4 beers and eat $12 meals while groups of unemployed East Timorese sit on the embankment above the restaurant, watching them. Most, if not all, of Eddie's local staff would be receiving less than a main meal per day. These cockroach capitalists are not willing to share more than a tiny fraction of their quickly accumulating wealth with the Timorese. The notorious Timor Lodge is run by Wayne Thomas and a consortium of Australians, including Liberal Party president Shane Stone. The hotel is situated on a former Indonesian army barracks, officially the property of UNTAET. Thomas has been credited with introducing prostitution to East Timor and was most recently rumoured to be caught importing bullets. Staff receiving 25,000 rupiah ($A5) a week at the Timor Lodge earlier this year struck for higher wages and won 40,000 rupiah. However, a week later they were handed a lump of money and told never to show their faces on the property again. In other areas, local Timorese staff are often treated with contempt, ordered around as photocopy dogsbodies and denied higher wages because of "lack of skills". The UN still has a general practice of hiring only English speakers. The disparity between local and international salaries is emerging as one of the biggest issues. Local wages have been set in accordance with the current price of goods. The NGOs (Non Goverment Organisations) have drafted an agreement with "an explicit understanding between employing agencies that they will adhere to these salaries in order to minimise the poaching of employees." These salaries start at $A4.36 a day for unskilled labour. Many goods for sale in the Dili markets are more expensive than in Australia. Bus fares before the ballot were Rp100 (2 cents), now they are Rp1,000. Kerosene has doubled in price while petrol, which is now brought to East Timor exclusively by an Australian company, has quadrupled. One Timorese student estimates that an adequate wage to feed, clothe and support a family of eight or nine people is around $A30-$35 a day. A "bottom of the pile" wage for international staff is around $US40,000 a year, while for Timorese it's $US360. For example, an apprentice carpenter in Maliana gets $US1.50 a day - plus rice. The UN justifies this in an internal document (written to respond to sticky questions from locals) stating: "National staff's remuneration is set according to local salary conditions. International staff are paid according to international salary scales, based on the cost of living elsewhere." The UN argues that it is legitimate to invest more money in the maintenance of UNTAET rather than in rebuilding the country because UNTAET receives its finances from
(Fwd) Kostunica blames West for fighting - The Daily Telegraph
--- Forwarded message follows --- Date sent: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 10:32:34 -0800 To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Sid Shniad [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Kostunica blames West for fighting - The Daily Telegraph H. Will NATO bomb Kostunica-led Yugoslavia if he moves against the Albanians? Wasn't this the pretext for bombing the country when Milosevic was at the helm? - The Daily Telegraph November 28, 2000 Kostunica blames West for fighting After Albanian attacks, Yugoslavia said Serbian police units would expel 1,500-member Albanian guerrilla force if peacekeepers did not act By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia yesterday accused NATO- led forces in Kosovo of failing to stop Albanian rebel attacks in Serbia, warning them that the violence "could easily set the entire region ablaze". Frantic efforts by the KFOR peacekeepers succeeded last night in extending a ceasefire in the Presevo valley, a mainly Albanian region within Serbia where renewed fighting raises the spectre of a new Balkan war. The valley is part of a three-mile buffer zone where, under the terms of a deal that ended NATO bombing last year, only lightly armed Serb police can be deployed. However, after Albanian attacks in which three Serb policemen were killed, Yugoslavia deployed tanks nearby and said Serbian police units would enter the buffer zone to expel the 1,500-member Albanian guerrilla force if the peacekeepers did not act. American military officers have ordered more patrols along the Kosovo border to stop infiltrators. Jonuz Musliu, the head of the Albanian fighters' political wing, also agreed to give more time for talks. Mr Kostunica laid the blame on the Western forces controlling Kosovo. He said: "It is crystal clear that Unmik [the United Nations Mission in Kosovo] and KFOR have failed to do their part of the job properly." --- End of forwarded message ---
Re: Re: Canadian Election Results..
What is good is that the Alliance did not get in. They are quite right wing. Some of their candidates were racist. They are terrible on aboriginal issues. They want a two tier health system though they claim otherwise. They are right-wing populist..They are against the Liberals farly stringent gun control legislation and in the west this is a huge issue.. but even more important western farmers do not think LIberals pay attention to them. The split between east and west in the country will be widened somewhat. BUt Liberals do have members in every province. In Quebec the Bloc lost many seats. This does not bode well for the separatist cause. So depending on how you look at it .Quebec will not gain its independence or Quebec will not split Canada. The Liberal rhetoric tends to be at odds with what they do. They are pro-globalisation neo-liberals and have slashed funds from social programs even though some has been put back so that they represent themselves as saviours of our health care system when they ruined it in the first place. The most progressive part of this election is that it has kept even more reactionary forces at bay.. The one supposedly left party the NDP has a leader attracted to the third way. FOrtunately she did not stress this in her campaign. I thought she was reasonably good but many of my friends think she is not a good campaigner... CHeers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2000 6:14 PM Subject: [PEN-L:5069] Re: Canadian Election Results.. Without implying any crass parliamentarism or tailism behind any political party, what is good and what is problematic about these results? (I mean in terms of things like shifting the terrain of struggle onto more progressive issues, making it easier for the majority of working people to struggle for control of their economic and political lives, including the safety of the environment.) Chris Burford London At 16:52 28/11/00 -0600, you wrote: Here are the results of the Canadian Federal election yesterday: Liberals 173 Alliance 66 Bloc Quebecois 37 Conservatives 12 New Democratic Party 13. The Liberals gained 18 seats, the Alliance 8. The Bloc have 7 fewer seats. The Conservatives have almost half as many as before, and the NDP has six less seats. The voter turnout was 63%...low for Canada. THe right-wing Alliance captured a strong protest vote in the West but captured ony two seats east of Manitoba. All parties retained party status by electing at least 12. The Bloc runs only in Quebec. The Liberals gained quite a few seats there. Cheers, Ken Hanly.
Marx: What Is a Negro Slave? (was Re: renouncing whiteness)
Chris Niles wrote: many writers and activist see the white race as a biologically empty and socially destructive but hesitate to become anti-white for fear of social alienation, so they settle for "anti-racism." "White people have not always been 'white,' nor will they always be 'white.' It is a political alliance. Things will change" (Amoja Three Rivers, _Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White_, ed. David R. Roediger). This, too, shall pass. if what you mean is that europeans were not, in and of themselves, more prone to repressive tendencies, then yes, i would agree. That, too, but, more importantly, I'm saying that the ensemble of social relations labeled "Europe," "Europeans," "European culture" -- like "the White Race" -- is very new, very modern, created through the process of primitive accumulation (enclosure + enslavement) recreated in the process of the Industrial Revolution. Capitalism created the ensemble of social relations -- the Market created maintained by the State, namely warfare law enforcement, supplemented by extra-legal violence -- that gave rise to "Europe" the "White Man." "Europeans" did not create capitalism; capitalism created "Europeans." Pre-capitalist denizens of the area now called "Europe" did not think of themselves as "white," "European," etc. "Negroes" did not become enslaved; enslavement created "Negroes." * Capital consists of raw materials, instruments of labour and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are utilised in order to produce new raw materials, new instruments of labour and new means of subsistence. All these component parts of capital are creations of labour, products of labour, _accumulated labour_. Accumulated labour which serves as a means of new production is capital. So say the economists. What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. The one explanation is as good as the other. (Karl Marx, "Wage Labour and Capital," _The Marx-Engels Reader_ 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Tucker, NY: W.W. Norton, 1978, p. 207). * This kind of attributional error that puts the cart before the horse, so to speak, is rooted in commodity fetishism; recall Marx's analysis of "the eighteenth-century Robinsonades" in _Grundrisse. have not read it... * The individual and isolated hunter and fisherman, with whom Smith and Ricardo begin, belongs among the unimaginative conceits of the eighteenth-century Robinsonades, which in no way express merely a reaction against over-sophistication and a return to a misunderstood natural life, as cultural historians imagine. As little as Rousseau's _contrat social_, which brings naturally independent, autonomous subjects into relation and connection by contract, rests on such naturalismIt is...the anticipation of "civil society"In this society of free competition, the individual appears detached from the natural bonds etc.,# which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a definite and limited human conglomerate. Smith and Ricardo still stand with both feet on the shoulders of the eighteenth-century prophets, in whose imaginations this eighteenth-century individual -- the product on one side of the dissolution of the feudal forms of society, on the other side of the new forces of production developed since the sixteenth century -- appears as an ideal, whose existence they project into the past. Not as a historic result but as history's point of departure. As the Natural Individual appropriate to their notion of human nature, not arising historically, but posited by nature. (Marx, _The Grundrisse_, _The Marx-Engels Reader_ 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Tucker, NY: W.W. Norton, 1978, p. 222) * # On "natural": Keep in mind that in Marx's later works, the word "natural" is best understood to mean "spontaneously grown, not consciously determined, etc," in contradiction to the commonsense understanding of "nature" as eternal, unchanging "essence" beneath the artificial "appearance." the modern notion of race would not have developed if it were not for capitalism Right you are. race could go away now without their being a corresponding fall of capitalism, but it hasn't yet And I doubt that it will without the abolition of capitalism. While slavery existed in the American South, ideology characterized slaves as "happy darkies"; with the Civil War emancipation, the old idea of "happy darkies" receded while a new idea of "dark criminals" emerged. Criminal justice became a part of reaction against Black Reconstruction. Similarly, in reaction against the partial success of the Civil Rights movement other social movements of the 60s, criminal justice expanded to reproduce "persistent patterns of multi-faceted social inequalities that correspond with ethnic differences." phew. i understand the components of your arguments but they seem to contradict. can you simplify it for me?
Langston Hughes: Ballad of the Landlord (was Re: renouncingwhiteness)
Gordon Fitch wrote: You can see where I would agree with Yoshie that racist practice -- in the case of the U.S., the creation of Whiteness -- was the result of police and judicial action. However, there are also private enforcers besides the police -- employers, bankers, landlords, local politicians, godfathers, gang leaders, and people who work for them -- who may also do the same thing for the similar reasons. These would produce alternative forms of racist practice not directly connected, necessarily, to police actions. Bosses, bankers, landlords, etc. cannot enforce anything without the police. No police, no contract. No Leviathan, no "bellum omnium contra omnes." No Panopticon, no "Freedom, Equality, Property, Bentham." Langston Hughes' "Ballad of the Landlord" illustrates this point beautifully: * Ballad of the Landlord Landlord, landlord, My roof has sprung a leak. Don't you 'member I told you about it Way last week? Landlord, landlord, These steps is broken down. When you come up yourself It's a wonder you don't fall down. Ten Bucks you say I owe you? Ten Bucks you say is due? Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'll pay you Till you fix this house up new. What? You gonna get eviction orders? You gonna cut off my heat? You gonna take my furniture and Throw it in the street? Um-huh! You talking high and mighty. Talk on -- till you get through. You ain't gonna be able to say a word If I land my fist on you. _Police! Police! Come and get this man! He's trying to ruin the government And overturn the land!_ Copper's whistle! Patrol bell! Arrest. Precinct Station. Iron cell. Headlines in press: MAN THREATENS LANDLORD TENANT HELD NO BAIL JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL * And it doesn't take a Marxist to understand it. Here's J. S. Mill, _Considerations of Representative Government_: * Nothing but foreign force would induce a tribe of North American Indians to submit to the restraints of a regular and civilized governmentAgain, a people must be considered unfit for more than a limited and qualified freedom, who will not cooperate actively with the law and the public authorities, in the repression of evil-doers. A people who are more disposed to shelter a criminal than to apprehend him; who, like the Hindoos, will perjure themselves to screen the man who has robbed them, rather than take trouble or expose themselves to vindictiveness by giving evidence against him;...a people who are revolted by an execution, but not shocked at an assassination -- require that the public authorities should be armed with much sterner powers of repression than elsewhere, since the first indispensable requisites of civilized life have nothing else to rest on. * Yoshie
Of libertarians and libertarianism
'It was never a black and white affair' The Tory: Alfred Sherman Jonathan Glancey The Guardian Friday November 10, 2000 What happened in 1453?" The fall of Constantinople? "Exactly." Having assured himself that a Guardian journalist has some vague knowledge of history, Sir Alfred Sherman plunges into a gloriously complex, yet lucid exploration of world history, making connections between peoples, cultures, religions and trade routes where few fellow government and public affairs policy advisors are likely to make them. Sherman is best known as Margaret Thatcher's guru, co-founder of the rightwing Centre for Policy Studies and the man who did as much as anyone else to roll back of the frontiers of the Tory state from 1979. Privatising the railways? This onetime Daily Telegraph leader writer would have converted them into express bus lanes. If one takes Sherman's anti-state philosophy to its logical conclusion, one might well be arguing for the withering away of the state itself. This, of course, is an idea of Karl Marx, nemesis of Thatcherism. Sir Alfred, however, was a member of the communist party from his teenage years to 1947. "I was expelled," he says, "for attacking Stalin over Yugoslavia, and much else beside." By then, Sherman, had decided that Stalin was, to put it bluntly, "a bastard". "Communism and socialism were walls that stood in front of me after the Hitler war. I took them down brick by brick until I could see the clear light beyond." This conversion from youthful communism to arch-liberalism in his 50s seems logical enough. Sherman is, at heart, a man unwilling to put up with bullies, whether Spanish fascist generals of the 1930s or democratic superpowers that choose to throw their weight around in the Middle East and elsewhere today. In 1937, his bogey states were Italy, Germany and Spain. Today, the problem is the United States. Sherman was born to Jewish emigre parents in Hackney in 1919. His father was a left-wing Russian tailor. There were books in the house, although on the day Sherman junior left Victoria station with a dozen or so young colleagues for Spain in 1937, he had yet to read Marx. "My politics were driven by emotion. That's how you see the world at 17. It's all black and white, painted in broad brushstrokes. I was studying chemistry at the time at Chelsea Polytechnic. I was appalled by the rise of fascism, followed the civil war in the papers and wanted to do my bit." With no military training? "No. I'd never picked up a gun. What I could do, though, was speak Spanish, and French. Came in handy. "When we arrived in Spain - train to Perpignan and then on foot over the Pyrenees - we were given three weeks basic military training by Red Army volunteers. We'd teamed up by then with a wide mix of fellow brigaders - miners, shipbuilders, many of them world war one veterans - and went into action on the Zaragoza road." Like many soldiers who have been involved in the bloody business of killing and being shot at but have no love of bloodshed, Sherman is not interested in talking about the actual fighting he took part in. What he does talk about is the weaponry. He can name the parts and assess the effectiveness of Mexican Mausers, Soviet-made first world war Remingtons, water-cooled Maxims, and air-cooled Soviet machine guns. He wasn't hurt. "Lucky." What did he think of shooting to kill? "What's a soldier for?" he retorts as the sun sinks over the Chelsea horizon and his comfortable flat, all books and papers, sinks into the dark, an age and a geography away from the sun-scorched Aragon front. "Bloody cold in winter," adds Sherman in case I begin to wax romantic, which he refuses to do at any time in our conversation. Sherman says he was involved in three major actions. It took him some while, though, to build up a reasonably detailed picture of the internecine nature of his own side. It was never exactly pointillist at the time. Hindsight, he suggests, is a handy gift for those who wish to remember the past as it wasn't for them at the time. "If you want to know about the civil war in detail, read Hugh Thomas's history," he suggests. "We were stretched out along straggling fronts with little in the way of modern communications. Information was there, but sparse." Was he surprised that there were so many Catholics fighting Franco? No. He was generally well informed. "The Basques were zealous Catholics and were fanatically anti-Franco. There was even a Loyola brigade [Ignatius Loyola, 1491-1556, an aristocratic soldier wounded at the siege of Pampeluna, founded the Society of Jesus]. And, of course, there were Germans fighting Franco too. The Spanish civil war was never a black and white affair. Bloody complicated." And very bloody. Back off the train at Victoria station in 1938, Sherman took a job in a London electrical factory. He hadn't told his parents he was going to Spain; they were pleased to see him back and in one piece. What did he feel about
The Necessity of a Moral Police (was Re: renouncing whiteness?)
Justin writes: Jim says: Doesn't this appeal to renounce whiteness succumb to precisely those errors that Engels describes in Utopian and Scientific Socialism: namely that it is an appeal to moral action without identifying the material foundations for such an action? What does this mean? That we have to always show that moral action is also in ouir interests, or it is futile to appeal to morality? ALthough I agree that it's unrealistic to expect people to act against their long term group interests, I also doubt that it's plausible to suppose that people only respond, or respond best, to "material" appeals. Outrage that motivates is fostered by a sense of injustice, of having been wronged, not just harmed. While I have will argue against Moralism (which I define as the compulsive reduction of political questions to matters of moral choices, esp. individual moral choices), I agree with Justin here. What J. S. Mill disparagingly calls a "Moral Police" below is absolutely necessary. Implicit or explicit appeals to morality have will be part parcel of the enforcement mechanism of class solidarity (it goes without saying that I believe _implicit_ appeals are much more effective than explicit ones, for the latter may produce "contrarians" -- e.g., sophomoric individuals who revel in "anti-PC" swagger): * It is known that the bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry, are decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good, and that no one ought to be allowed, through piecework or otherwise, to earn by superior skill or industry more than others can without it. And they employ a moral police, which occasionally becomes a physical one, to deter skillful workmen from receiving, and employers from giving, a large remuneration for a more useful service. (J. S. Mill, "On Liberty," _On Liberty Other Essays_, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991, pp.97-8) * As Mill notes correctly, such a "moral police" must sometimes become a physical one. Recall the following sequence from Sergei Eisenstein's _Potemkin_, at the slain revolutionary sailor Vakulinchuk's funeral: * Everybody excitedly waves their hands and shouts: [TITLE:] 'Down with the autocrats!' The excitement of the crowd ...rises ...ever higher ...and higher, ...and draws near ...to its peak. A suspicious-looking man in a straw hat, his hands tucked insolently into his waistcoat, looks on with a disdainful smile. The woman shouts: [TITLE:] 'Mothers and brothers! Let there be no distinctions or enmities among ourselves!' ...and she exhorts the crowd. The suspicious-looking man in the straw hat smiles disdainfully. The woman continues her speech. The suspicious-looking man in the straw hat cries out: [TITLE:] 'Down with the Jews!' ...and smiles insolently. The men standing near him ...sharply ... and angrily, ...one ... after another, ...turn their heads. The reactionary [a member of the Black Hundred, a virulent anti-Jewish society] continues to smile insolently. One of the men advances towards him angrily. The reactionary grows frightened. The man continues to advance towards him. The reactionary pulls his straw hat over his eyes and tries to walk away, but he is stopped. The man looks at him in fury. The reactionary ...is surrounded by men. They pull his straw hat over his face and ...begin ...to attack him. http://www.geocities.com/rankostome5/potemkin.html * Yoshie
ACTION: Tell Amazon.com Stop Unionbusting!
HELP STOP UNIONBUSTING AT AMAZON.COM!!! Amazon.com has mounted a major antiunion campaign against workers seeking to exercise their right to unionize, holding captive audience meetings, pressuring individual employees and mounting libelous attacks on unions in general. Tell this anti-union company to stop their attacks on their workers right to organize or you will boycott their company. Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Let the company know that union-busting is unacceptable!!! Following is a NY Times article about Amazon.com's antiunion campaign. --- November 29, 2000 New York Times Amazon Fights Union Activity By STEVEN GREENHOUSE Amazon.com has come out swinging in its fight to stop a new unionization drive, telling employees that unions are a greedy, for-profit business and advising managers on ways to detect when a group of workers is trying to back a union. A section on Amazon's internal Web site gives supervisors antiunion material to pass on to employees, saying that unions mean strife and possible strikes and that while unions are certain to charge expensive dues, they cannot guarantee improved wages or benefits. The Web site advises managers on warning signs that a union is trying to organize. Among the signs that Amazon notes are "hushed conversations when you approach which have not occurred before," and "small group huddles breaking up in silence on the approach of the supervisor." Other warning signs, according to the site, are an increase in complaints, a decrease in quality of work, growing aggressiveness and dawdling in the lunchroom and restrooms. Amazon, one of the leaders in electronic retailing, has stepped up its antiunion activities the last week after two unions and an independent organizing group announced plans to speed efforts to unionize Amazon during the holiday e-shopping rush. The organizing drive is the most ambitious one ever undertaken in the high- technology sector, where the nation's labor movement has yet to establish a foothold. The Communications Workers of America has undertaken a campaign to unionize 400 customer-service representatives in Seattle, where Amazon is based. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Prewitt Organizing Fund, an independent organizing group, are seeking to unionize some 5,000 workers at Amazon's eight distribution centers across the country. The unionization drive has gained momentum because many workers are upset about layoffs at Amazon last January and about the sharp drop in the value of their stock options. One chapter on Amazon's internal Web site, which provides a rare internal glimpse at how a company is fighting off a union, is headlined, "Reasons a Union is Not Desirable." "Unions actively foster distrust toward supervisors," the Web site says. "They also create an uncooperative attitude among associates by leading them to think they are `untouchable' with a union." The Web site, which calls the company's workers associates, adds: "Unions limit associate incentives. Merit increases are contrary to union philosophy." A union supporter who insisted on anonymity and acknowledged seeking to embarrass the company over its antiunion campaign made a copy of the Web site material available to The New York Times. Amazon officials confirmed that the material came from the company's Web site. Patty Smith, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the main purpose of the Web site material was to tell supervisors what they can do to oppose a union and what actions by managers violate laws barring retaliation against workers who support unionization. For instance, the Web site said supervisors could tell workers that the company preferred to deal with them directly, rather than through an outside organization. It also said supervisors could tell workers about the benefits they enjoy. As for the don'ts, the Web site warns supervisors not to threaten workers with firings or reduce income or discontinue any privileges to any union supporter. Ms. Smith declined to name the lawyers the company had hired to work on the material. Union leaders said in interviews yesterday that their organizing drive was going somewhat worse than they had expected largely because of the unexpected aggressiveness of Amazon's antiunion efforts. Over the last two weeks, managers have held a half-dozen "all hands" meetings for customer service workers in Seattle, where managers have argued how unionizing would be bad for Amazon. Marcus Courtney, co-founder of the Washington Alliance of Technological Workers, an affiliate of the communications workers' union, said, "This shows how Amazon, despite its public statements that this is a decision we let our employees make themselves and we trust them to make the right decisions, all these meetings and the internal Web site and their manuals show that Amazon management is trying to take this basic democratic decision away from the workers and make it themselves." Ms. Smith denied that
