RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa
Yoshie: Is it possible to provide all human beings with food, clean water, sanitation, shelter, energy, medicine, education, transportation, etc. that are necessary to meet historically developed minimum needs (setting aside other needs desires for the time being) under socialism? Or is it impossible since we are running out of fossil fuels clean water soon the population is exploding, as Mark says? Please stop attributing to me views I don't hold, it makes discussion pointless. Oil, gas and water will never run out. The issue is their economic availability to capitalism--and the price the rest of us pays. We discussed population before, and you said the same kinds of things then. I have one exchange dating from May 1998, when oil was about $10 a barrel and some people were busy discussing folies du jour like Tulip-o-mania, Zizek and Butler, and Greenspan's damascene conversion on the New Economy. Seems like a different era, hey? - Subject: Marx on surplus population Sender: Mark Jones Date: 17.05.98 Recipient: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: The limits and scarcities that marxists should be primarily concerned about are artificial--not natural--ones. Why? This is not to say that nature places no constraint upon social activities, be they labor or anything else. It does, in that the social world is embedded in the natural world. However, marxism, both in theory and practice, primarily addresses itself to what is _social_, both in terms of constraints _and_ possibilities. If this was so, would Marx ever have talked about modes of production, machinery, agriculture, desertification etc? Marxists should pay attention to the natural world, but we are _not_ naturalists. Meaningless. Let's think about the politics of food, for instance. Is it because we do not produce enough food that there are millions of the working class people who suffer from hunger and malnutrition now? No, it's not, even though the ruling class and their media want us to believe that. As of now, we have enough food production capacity to feed people all over the world comfortably, don't we? So you think the problem is merely one of distribution? Redistributional social justice politics, has nothing to do with Marxism. Environmental justice politics also has nothing in common with Marxism. It is because of social relations of capitalism--the contradiction between labor and capital--that masses of people are hungry, and how to rid ourselves of those social relations that exploit and oppress people because of their class, gender, race, nationality, and so on is the main object and objective of marxist theory and practice. People are not exploited 'because of their race, class' etc. Just as you reduce Marxist politics to a politics of social justice, so you reduce Marxist economics to a branch of sociology + pursuit of bourgeois right. All 'civil rights' (from which discourses of social justice derive) depend on bourgeois right, ie, the primacy and sanctity of property relations: but property relations, for Marxism, are merely a mystification. They are forms of production relations, not the presuppositions of production (and therefore the material basis of exploitation is not jurisprudential, but rooted in production). Marxist analysis of the capitalist mode of production is not a theory of exploitation. Marx specifically criticised such notions. It is a theory and narrative of value production, and the forms value assumes in the circuits of capital. This is not an optional extra to a notion of exploitation; it is the core of the theory. That is why it is not struggles around distribution but struggles around production which matter, because production is the centre of gravity of capitalism.Specifically, Marxism asserts that the production of capital is constrained by its material basis (extent and limits). The reason there is hunger in the world is because the rate of accumulation is historically too low to prevent the formation of surplus population, and the reason for that is because the rate of increase of social productivity is too low to generate enough capital to give the whole population First World living standards. When Marx wrote of the production of surplus population, he called it 'the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation'. (Cap I p798, Penguin ed). It is impossible to develop Marxism while abandoning core concepts like this. Who is defining the political and theoretical terrain? Racists who fear immigration, or their liberal opponents who manage to neuter theory in the name of an apologetic 'political correctness'? This 'absolute general law' is today central to understanding the conjuncture, more even than in Marx's day, and far from avoiding the issue, we need to relentlessly pursue it: ' The production of a relative surplus population, or the setting free of workers, therefore proceeds more rapidly than the technical transformation of the
Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION
Also, deforestation may eventually result in reforestation. Forest fires clear very large areas just as much as clear cutting. The forests eventually regenerate through a progressive series of plant and tree species. Traveling through a newly burned out area is just as much or more a scene of devastation as seeing a clear cut area but over time shrubs appear certain species such as birch and as in time the original type of cover.. Cheers, Ken Hanly Of course there is reforestration. It takes the form of trees intended for harvest, grown commercially. From an ecological standpoint, this is practically useless. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa
By John's criteria, only the rich who can afford _not_ to eat fast food, shop at Wal-Mart, etc. can live morally correct lives. What the masses buy is cheap mass products of sweatshop labor; what the truly rich buy, in contrast, is expensive products of relatively well-paid artisanal labor. Haute couture formal dining at fashionable restaurants (or better yet, _your own personal cook_, well compensated year-around to provide meals _at home_, to your taste convenience) are good examples of the latter. Morally correct consumption is a luxury that only those who don't can't count their own money can afford. Yoshie http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0101/1160.html * If you agree more with John Thornton than me, that's fine, but I think that berating people who patronize fast food joints shop at WalMart the like, in the absence of requests to boycott them from workers who either work for them or produce inputs for their goods, is counter-productive. Your problem is that you failed to provide a counter-analysis to John Thornton and other middle-class greens on Doug's list. This is not about Utne Reader type folks wearing Birkenstocks and taking vacations in Costa Rica. It is about ecological imperialism, which never seemed to have entered your calculation or Carrol's. No Marxist would call for a boycott of Kmart or Macdonalds or any other corporation benefitting from the rape of third world countries. On the other hand, it is necessary to educate working people about the class questions involved with making cheap commodities available. Like this: As stupid, irrational and self-destructive a system capitalism is, it reached new depths when it fostered the development of cattle- ranching in Central America in the early 1970s. The growth of McDonald's, Burger King and other fast food outlets had created an insatiable demand for beef. These types of restaurants had no need for the choice, fat-stuffed grain-fed beef that were found in super markets. They could get by on the sort of tougher, lower- grade beef that was typical of cattle that subsisted on grass alone, since the meat would be ground up anyhow. The free-range criollo cattle of Central America made a perfect fit for this expanding market. Historically, the cattle industry in Central America was a very low- tech operation. Cowboys would drive a herd to a major city where slaughter-houses could be found. The cattle would be cut up and sent out to public markets, often in the open air and unrefrigerated, where a customer would select a piece of meat off of the carcass. However, to satisfy the external market, a more modern mode of production had to be adopted. Firstly, roads needed to be created to transport the cattle by truck from the countryside. Secondly, packing houses had to be created near ports to prepare the beef for export. Foreign investors made road- building possible, just the way that British capital made railroads possible in the US for identical reasons. The Alliance for Progress aided in the creation of such infrastructure as well. The packing-houses themselves were built by local capitalists with some assistance from the outside. It was these middle-men, who stood between rancher and importer, that cashed in on the beef bonanza. The Somoza family were movers and shakers in the packing-house industry. As monopolists, they could paid the rancher meager prices and sell the processed beef at a premium price since demand for beef was at an all-time high. In addition, the Somoza family used its profits and loans from foreign investors to buy up huge swaths of land in Nicaragua to create cattle ranches. They had already acquired 51 ranches before the beef-export boom, but by 1979, after two decades of export-led growth, their holdings and those of their cronies had expanded to more than 2 million acres, more than half of which was in the best grazing sectors. It was these properties and the packing-houses that became nationalized immediately after the FSLN triumph. The gains of Somoza and other oligarchic families in Central America took place at the expense of campesino and small rancher alike. While the plight of the campesino is more familiar, the small rancher suffered as well. Before the export boom started, about 1/4 of all cattle were held by ranchers with properties less than 25 acres. After a decade of export-led growth, small proprietors had lost 20 percent of their previous cattle holdings and owned only 1/8th of the cattle in the region. (It should be mentioned, by the way, that this decade of export-led growth was statistically the sharpest increase in GDP in Central America since WWII. Yet this growth created the objective conditions for socialist revolution. Growth in itself is a meaningless term. It may satisfy the prejudices of libertarians, but it has nothing to do with human needs or social justice.) Nicaragua was notable in that the exploitation was home-grown, but in the rest of
Re: Re: Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa
Lou, if I could do it with a wave of my hand, I would wipe MacDonalds off the face of the earth. The institution of fast food is undoubtedly vicious. But attacking _people_ rather than the institutions that exploit them is just politically stupid. I don't really remember very well the specific thread -- but I have very consistently on LBO attacked generic attacks on people. This is not about attacking people. It is about educating yourself and educating others on the nature of ecological imperialism. In the entire discussion about Macdonalds french fries on Doug's list which seemed to have gone on longer than the thread on Andrew Sullivan's sex life, nobody--including you and Yoshie--ever seemed interested in where the stuff came from. It appeared to be a debate with two contrary but inadequate positions. People who read Utne Reader, wore Birkenstocks and took vacations in Costa Rica versus people who concluded from an undialectical reading of Karl Marx that the inexorable process of capitalist industrialization paves the way for socialism. In fact the inexorable process of capitalist industrialization paves the way to ruin and nothing else. All criticism of small-scale landownership is ultimately reducible to criticism of private property as a barrier and obstacle to agriculture. So too is all counter-criticism of large landed property. Secondary political considerations are of course left aside here in both cases. It is simply that this barrier and obstacle which all private property in land places to agricultural production and the rational treatment, maintenance and improvement of the land itself, develops in various forms, and in quarreling over these specific forms of the evil its ultimate root is forgotten. Small-scale landownership presupposes that the overwhelming majority of the population is agricultural and that isolated labour predominates over social; wealth and the development of reproduction, therefore, both in its material and intellectual aspects, is ruled out under these circumstances, and with this also the conditions for a rational agriculture. On the other hand, large landed property reduces the agricultural population to an ever decreasing minimum and confronts it with an every growing industrial population crammed together in large towns; in this way it produces conditions that provoke an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself. The result of this is a squandering of the vitality of the soil, which is carried by trade far beyond the bounds of a single country. If small-scale landownership creates a class of barbarians standing half outside society, combining all the crudity of primitive social forms with all the torments and misery of civilized countries, large landed property undermines labor-power in the final sphere to which its indigenous energy flees, and where it is stored up as a reserve fund for renewing the vital power of the nation, on the land itself. Large-scale industry and industrially pursued large-scale agriculture have the same effect. If they are originally distinguished by the fact that the former lays waste and ruins labour-power and thus the natural power of man, whereas the latter does the same to the natural power of the soil, they link up in the later course of development, since the industrial system applied to agriculture also enervates the workers there, while industry and trade for their part provide agriculture with the means of exhausting the soil. V. 3 of Capital, The Transformation of Surplus Profit into Ground-Rent Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
BLS Daily Report
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2001: The trade deficit in goods and services narrowed 2.7 percent in April as the global economic slowdown reduced both imports and exports, the Commerce Department reports. The improvements in the April trade imbalance came about as total imports fell 2.2 percent and exports fell 2 percent (Daily Labor Report, page D-1; The Washington Post, page E2; Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, page A2). Reduced demand for imported goods and the second consecutive monthly decline in exports underscore sluggish performance of the United States economy, which is spilling over to its trading partners. This is just another sign of a weakening economy, said a senior economist at CIBC World Markets Inc. in Toronto. When trade is falling in both directions, that is a sign that both domestic and foreign demand are falling. (The New York Times, page C6). Industrial production is plunging and layoffs are soaring. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of business cycles, says a recession may have already begun. If so, the first recession of this century is different from every other downturn of the last 50 years. That difference can be seen in the housing market, which is going along just fine, thank you. The National Association of Home Builders said this week that its housing index is up from a year ago and about double what it was in the last recession, in the early 1990's. By post-World War II standards, this is a backward economic cycle. A normal recession is preceded by inflation, which leads the Federal Reserve to push up interest rates, which devastates housing, the most economically sensitive of industries, before the rest of the economy succumbs. None of that happened this time. The inflation of the recent boom was in assets, not consumer prices, and it led to a huge overinvestment in capital equipment as telecommunications companies wasted billions of dollars in laying thousands of miles of excess fiber optic capacity. Now the collapse of capital spending is leading to rising unemployment and an economic slowdown. Lower interest rates are the main reason housing has not suffered, but an expensive rental market has also encouraged renters to buy. Rental costs rose 4.5 percent in the 12 months ended in May, the highest since rental inflation peaked at 4.6 percent in September 1990, a few months after the last recession began. (The New York Times, page C1). The belief is growing that the United States is a nation divided into haves and have-nots, according to survey results released yesterday by the Pew Research Center for the People the Press. In the survey of 1,200 adults taken June 13-17, 44 percent agree America is a nation divided into haves and have-nots. But most, 53 percent, said it was not. The survey report compared the result with a 1999 Gallup survey in which 39 percent said the United States was so divided, and a 1988 Gallup survey in which 26 percent gave that answer. The income gap between rich and poor widened in the 1980s and 1990s, reaching its widest point in 1997, according to a study released by the Congressional Budget Office last month (The Washington Post, page E2). The economic boom of the 1990s improved the financial outlook for upper middle class and wealthy Americans, but it had little impact on the outlook or financial condition of those who make less money, a new poll says. The number of people who think the country is divided between those who have enough and those who don't has grown steadily and now is at 44 percent -- up from 26 percent in 1988. Findings from the poll indicate that women were more concerned about rising prices than men, four in 10 Americans now say there are plenty of jobs available, up from one in 10 who felt that way 8 years ago. Those from wealthy households were twice as likely to feel that way as those with low incomes. Blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities were more likely than whites to struggle with economic issues, even when compared with whites in the same economic range (Will Lester, Associated Press, http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/31058p-527439c.html; http://www.latimes.com/wires/20010622/tCB00V0594.html). application/ms-tnef
BLS Daily Report
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 2001: Because productivity growth melts away problems of inflation, budget deficits, unemployment and stagnant income, there is great interest in knowing whether the upturn reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since the mid-1990's will persist. Thus the 1.2 percent decline in productivity last quarter, if it is more than a cyclical blip, is worrisome, writes Alan B. Krueger, Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and editor of The Journal of Economic Perspectives, in Economic Scene (The New York Times, page C2). But can the numbers be trusted? he asks. New research from economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Affairs presented at the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee meeting in Washington this month suggests that one potential problem with the statistics -- the measurement of hours worked -- is much less of a problem than previously believed. Even small differences matter, so accuracy is crucial. Production grew at an annual rate of 2.7 percent from 1947 to 1975, then mysteriously slowed to 1.4 percent for 1975 to 1995, before rebounding to 2.8 percent after 1995. If productivity had grown at the higher rate all along, national income would be 30 percent greater today. In principal, labor productivity is easy to measure -- simply divide economic output by the number of hours used to produce it. There are only two problems: the numerator and the denominator. Most attention has focused on the numerator. Economic output is notoriously hard to measure because the quality of goods changes constantly and because new goods are periodically introduced. But others criticize the measurement of hours worked. Most recently Morgan Stanley's chief economist has argued that the Bureau of Labor Statistics undercounts the hours people work because employees increasingly perform work after hours on cell phones, beepers and home computers. A team of four researchers from BLS and the Bureau of Economic Affairs, led by Marilyn E. Manser, head of the Office of Productivity and Technology, has investigated his hypothesis. It came up lacking. Usually it is not newsworthy when government statistics turn out to be accurate. It is just reading tea leaves to forecast from currently available data whether the takeoff in productivity growth in the 1990's has evaporated. Still, the latest research suggests the productivity tea leaves are worth reading. Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan said yesterday that inflation remained modest, though bore careful watching, while consumer confidence appeared to be holding up despite a rash of layoffs. At the same time, the New York-based Conference Board said its index of leading economic indicators improved in May. It predicted slow growth during the next several months. During testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Greenspan offered a mixed picture of U.S. business. He warned there were signs of declining asset quality within the banking industry. He also said he expected better figures for U.S. productivity, a key indicator of the economic growth, in the second quarter of the year. Productivity fell in the first 3 months of 2001, after years of rapid increase. Asked about the possibility for accelerating inflation, Greenspan acknowledged that energy and labor costs had been increasing. He added that he saw no evidence that those costs were being passed through into final prices in any material way but were squeezing corporate profit margins. Greenspan said that despite increasing layoffs, consumers still exhibited a fairly high degree of confidence. To be sure, consumer expenditures have not been going up in any material way, but the have held their own. Consumer spending makes up nearly two-thirds of the economy (Sue Kirchhoff, Boston Globe staff, http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/172/business/Fed_chief_reports_inflation _modest+.shtml 6/21/01). The index of leading economic indicators climbed 0.5 percent in May, suggesting the slowdown might end in the near future, according to the Conference Board. The rise marked the second straight increase in the leading indicators, a sign that the U.S. economy might be poised for some recovery, the Conference Board economist says (Daily Labor Report, page D-1; The Washington Post, page E2; The New York Times, Reuters, page C3). The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in April, as Americans cut back on purchases of foreign-made goods, including TVs, toys, and telecommunications equipment. The Commerce Department reports that the trade imbalance shrank by 2.7 percent in April to $32.2 billion. The March deficit, however, was even bigger than the government previously estimated, mushrooming to $33.1 billion, according to revised figures. In April, exports of goods and services fell by 2 percent to $86.9
Re: BLS Daily Report
Richardson_D wrote: said a senior economist at CIBC World Markets Inc. in Toronto. When trade is falling in both directions, that is a sign that both domestic and foreign demand are falling. (The New York Times, page C6). Concise, coherent and cogent. Where would we be without senior economists, eh? Sigh, Rob.
Re: Current implications for South Africa
Lou: By John's criteria, only the rich who can afford _not_ to eat fast food, shop at Wal-Mart, etc. can live morally correct lives. What the masses buy is cheap mass products of sweatshop labor; what the truly rich buy, in contrast, is expensive products of relatively well-paid artisanal labor. Haute couture formal dining at fashionable restaurants (or better yet, _your own personal cook_, well compensated year-around to provide meals _at home_, to your taste convenience) are good examples of the latter. Morally correct consumption is a luxury that only those who don't can't count their own money can afford. Yoshie http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0101/1160.html * If you agree more with John Thornton than me, that's fine, but I think that berating people who patronize fast food joints shop at WalMart the like, in the absence of requests to boycott them from workers who either work for them or produce inputs for their goods, is counter-productive. Your problem is that you failed to provide a counter-analysis to John Thornton and other middle-class greens on Doug's list. This is not about Utne Reader type folks wearing Birkenstocks and taking vacations in Costa Rica. It is about ecological imperialism, which never seemed to have entered your calculation or Carrol's. No Marxist would call for a boycott of Kmart or Macdonalds or any other corporation benefitting from the rape of third world countries. On the other hand, it is necessary to educate working people about the class questions involved with making cheap commodities available. Like this: As stupid, irrational and self-destructive a system capitalism is, it reached new depths when it fostered the development of cattle- ranching in Central America in the early 1970s. snip I think Greens on Doug's list elsewhere already have a pretty good grasp of the effects of ecological imperialism on the Third World, but their understanding of monoculture cattle-ranching in Central America elsewhere in the Third World isn't necessarily accompanied by an understanding of class politics on this side of the North/South border, in which, too, workers -- many of whom are consumers as well as employees of fast food joints, retail outlets like Kmart, etc. -- struggle, beyond Barbara Ehrenreich's _Nickel and Dimed_. The problem is that Green sympathy for the plight of the Third World poor under ecological imperialism doesn't in itself translate into a conviction that socialism is necessary _here_. Earnest supporters of the Zaps the like don't particularly go for socialism. I think Americans have done a relatively decent job of organizing Central American solidarity groups activities (relatively decent under the circumstances) but little that advances toward socialism _here_ (therefore revolutions elsewhere eventually got crushed, though Cuba has managed to survive US embargo -- which American leftists have been unable to lift -- with herculean efforts sacrifices of the people). In any case, you might rejoin Doug's list, if you are itching to intervene there with your take. Lastly, what happened to the energy question? Are fossil fuels soon running out? Are alternative energy sources viable given a chance? :-) Yoshie
recession and real estate prices
The collapse of the dot.coms has cut real estate prices in San Francisco, but the previous momentum is still pushing prices up in Sacramento -- about 90 miles away. Chico prices -- about 160 miles from San Francisco -- seem to have leveled out, the realators in the sauna tell me. Is there much information about how recessions propagate across regions within a single economy? I read about the synchronization of world economic cycles, yet the lags seem relatively long, even within the N. Cal. economy. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Current implications for South Africa
Lou says: People who read Utne Reader, wore Birkenstocks and took vacations in Costa Rica versus people who concluded from an undialectical reading of Karl Marx that the inexorable process of capitalist industrialization paves the way for socialism. In fact the inexorable process of capitalist industrialization paves the way to ruin and nothing else. Rural electrification free electricity for the South African masses, however, is a pressing political demand today. (Sunday Independent, 27 July 1999) Power to the powerful: Ideology of apartheid energy still distorts electricity sector by Patrick Bond snip The 1995 energy policy also argued that `Fuelwood is likely to remain the primary source of energy in the rural areas.' As if on cue, Eskom began to wind down its rural electrification programme and does not envisage electrifying the nation's far-flung schools. Notwithstanding Eskom's commercialisation fetish, its economists had badly miscalculated rural affordability. Paying as much as R0,48 per hour (compared to a corporate average of R0,06 and bigger discounts for the Alusaf), rural women use up their pre-paid metre cards within a week and can't afford to buy another until the next pension payout. But in pricing power out of reach of the poor, the well-paid economists from Eskom, the World Bank and government refused to incorporate `multiplier effects' that would benefit broader society, were people granted a small free lifeline electricity supply: better public health, a cleaner environment, more SMMEs, infrastructure construction jobs and more equal relations between men and women. If Mlambo-Ngcuka cares about such `public goods' as much as `getting the prices right' (for privatisation?), she now has a chance to transform neoliberal electricity policy, muffling that suspicious echo of apartheid-era power. We have to put a stop to indulging in useless alarmist speculations that fossil fuels are soon running out alternative energy sources are impossible to find on PEN-l (which thankfully only Mark seems to entertain you don't after all); get on with present-day struggles for electricity for those still without it, against the privatization of public utilities, for thorough environmental clean-ups, for enforcement of worker consumer safety standards, etc. Such struggles are important in themselves and at the same time promise to make it more difficult for capital to externalize the costs of accumulation. Yoshie
Re: recession and real estate prices
Is there a parallel between the real estate boom of Silicon Valley in the 1990s and the real estate boom of Miami in the 1920s? If so, I'm very hopeful that I'll be able to pick up some land cheap, real soon. tim --- Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The collapse of the dot.coms has cut real estate prices in San Francisco, but the previous momentum is still pushing prices up in Sacramento -- about 90 miles away. Chico prices -- about 160 miles from San Francisco -- seem to have leveled out, the realators in the sauna tell me. Is there much information about how recessions propagate across regions within a single economy? I read about the synchronization of world economic cycles, yet the lags seem relatively long, even within the N. Cal. economy. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] = Subscribe to ChicoLeft by emailing [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChicoLeft Subscribe to the Chico Examiner for only $30 annually or $20 for six months. Mail cash or check payabe to Tim Bousquet to POBox 4627, Chico CA 95927 __ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa
Again, this discussion is fraught with too many accusations of and attributions to others on the list. Please cool it. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION
No the geography is quite different. I am talking about areas that were mostly native grasses relatively flat or gently rolling hills. The tree species that settlement let spread are different as well mostly quick growing, poplar types. What is called white poplar here or quaking aspen and black poplar. However there are quite a few planted spruce and some other deciduous trees such as Manitoba maple and ash. I was thinking of rivers as firebreaks but it is possible that fires jumped them often especially in late summer when water levels are low. The tree growth I am talking about is less forest than woodlots areas that either were not broken after settlement, left as pasture with trees, or marginal land let go back to pasture and woodlot. But before settlement as I mentioned much of the land was native grassland with some trees in river valleys and some other specific areas. But the plains were periodically ravaged by fire. Usually most of the deciduous trees would be burned down and these woodlot areas could not establish themselves as they could after grid roads of settlement provided fire breaks. Even in the already existing forests in the northern shield--outside settled agricultural areas- the vast majority of trees are completely destroyed by fire and this would include the conifer such as different types of spruce. I gather from the other post I sent that some types of pines survive or even require fire but I do not think that they are native to this particular area although shield species may be different further south in the south part of Northern Ontario. The tree growth spread by settlement is not associated with any great economic boom. In the early days it no doubt provided a source of fuel and still does but to a limited extent. Of course some of this woodlot was subsequently cleared too in many areas- to be used to grow grain or forage crops. My point is that settlement does not necessarily mean deforestation that some woodlands are a human artifact produced by pioneers. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Tim Bousquet [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 1:12 AM Subject: [PEN-L:13929] Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION Ken, I'm not understanding the geography of your area. Here, in northern California, the forested areas are up on the Sierra, while the valley floor was grassland. In between is manzanita bushes, high deer concentration. The sugar pine forest of the eastern Sierra around Chico was completely clearcut between 1873 and about 1901. In 1877 a 40-mile long flume was built down the mountain, connecting the sawmills around the sugarpine forests with Chico, which became the lumbering center of northern California. The flume caused an economic boom that year--1877-- and caused the population of Chico to swell to about 7,000, but the flume fundamentally changed the lumber industry such that an oversupply depressed prices, and there was a boom/bust cycle every few years. Chico population dropped down to about 3,000 until well into the 20th century. (It's beside the point, but the flume company brought Chinese workers to work the sash and door factory associated with their flume, and the local white population took umbrage, eventually forming a secret society that was dedicated to murdering them outright. The Chico mass murders of 1877 so revolted eastern society that anti-Chinese sentiment in Congress was off-set for a while, and the anti-immigration mesures were probably set a decade or two back.) The forested areas east of town eventually were bought by the Diamond Match company, which still maintains a large tree farm in the area. I have a different take on the fire situation. Maybe the canyons are steeper here, but creeks have never served as a firebreak, fire just jumps right over them. During the Depression a roadway called Ponderosa Way was cut just about right at the area where the manzanita land meets the forests-- the purpose of the road was to serve as a firebreak. This road stretches from Sacramento all the way to Mount Shasta--maybe 200 miles. It's not that the fire would run up the hill and just stop at the road, but rather that the road allowed access for CCC fire crews, which could back burn so that the fire couldn't move further up into the forest. I assume that this was a taxpayer financed protection of corporate-owned tree farms up the ridge. Incidentally, I've found quite a few accounts from the 1860s when the Yahi and Yana--really the only two Indian nations resisting white encroachment-- set fire to the grasslands and manzanita lands of the lower foothills, with the expressed purpose of destroying cattle grazing opportunities for the whites. But those fires never caused any real damage to the forest further up. In short, there's far less forest around these parts than before colonization, or rather settlement, as it's called here.
Re: recession and real estate prices
Local realtors and developers have made much out of the high cost of housing in Chico, demanding, and getting, a green light on any housing development whatsoever in the name of providing low cost housing (of course, no one ever tracks the actual prices of the developments). But it's clear to me that we are in the San Francisco market. Bay Area residents found that their homes were doubling, tripling, quadrupling in value, and they could sell them, buy a nice home in Chico next to the park for a tenth as much, and live forever on the balance. Lots of forty-ish retirees in Chico. This obviously drives up the price of housing in Chico as sellers market to the incoming retirees. I imagine this process will even speed up with the dot-com downturn, as people leave the industry entirely. Can't go on forever, though. tim --- Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The collapse of the dot.coms has cut real estate prices in San Francisco, but the previous momentum is still pushing prices up in Sacramento -- about 90 miles away. Chico prices -- about 160 miles from San Francisco -- seem to have leveled out, the realators in the sauna tell me. Is there much information about how recessions propagate across regions within a single economy? I read about the synchronization of world economic cycles, yet the lags seem relatively long, even within the N. Cal. economy. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] = Subscribe to ChicoLeft by emailing [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChicoLeft Subscribe to the Chico Examiner for only $30 annually or $20 for six months. Mail cash or check payabe to Tim Bousquet to POBox 4627, Chico CA 95927 __ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
Re: recession and real estate prices
The collapse of the dot.coms has cut real estate prices in San Francisco, but the previous momentum is still pushing prices up in Sacramento -- about 90 miles away. Chico prices -- about 160 miles from San Francisco -- seem to have leveled out, the realators in the sauna tell me. Is there much information about how recessions propagate across regions within a single economy? I read about the synchronization of world economic cycles, yet the lags seem relatively long, even within the N. Cal. economy. -- Michael Perelman How well were dot.coms in the boom time integrated into the rest of the N. Cal economy? Yoshie
Re: Re: Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION
What you call forests in Ontario, we call weeds in California. tim --- Ken Hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No the geography is quite different. I am talking about areas that were mostly native grasses relatively flat or gently rolling hills. The tree species that settlement let spread are different as well mostly quick growing, poplar types. What is called white poplar here or quaking aspen and black poplar. However there are quite a few planted spruce and some other deciduous trees such as Manitoba maple and ash. I was thinking of rivers as firebreaks but it is possible that fires jumped them often especially in late summer when water levels are low. The tree growth I am talking about is less forest than woodlots areas that either were not broken after settlement, left as pasture with trees, or marginal land let go back to pasture and woodlot. But before settlement as I mentioned much of the land was native grassland with some trees in river valleys and some other specific areas. But the plains were periodically ravaged by fire. Usually most of the deciduous trees would be burned down and these woodlot areas could not establish themselves as they could after grid roads of settlement provided fire breaks. Even in the already existing forests in the northern shield--outside settled agricultural areas- the vast majority of trees are completely destroyed by fire and this would include the conifer such as different types of spruce. I gather from the other post I sent that some types of pines survive or even require fire but I do not think that they are native to this particular area although shield species may be different further south in the south part of Northern Ontario. The tree growth spread by settlement is not associated with any great economic boom. In the early days it no doubt provided a source of fuel and still does but to a limited extent. Of course some of this woodlot was subsequently cleared too in many areas- to be used to grow grain or forage crops. My point is that settlement does not necessarily mean deforestation that some woodlands are a human artifact produced by pioneers. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Tim Bousquet [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 1:12 AM Subject: [PEN-L:13929] Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION Ken, I'm not understanding the geography of your area. Here, in northern California, the forested areas are up on the Sierra, while the valley floor was grassland. In between is manzanita bushes, high deer concentration. The sugar pine forest of the eastern Sierra around Chico was completely clearcut between 1873 and about 1901. In 1877 a 40-mile long flume was built down the mountain, connecting the sawmills around the sugarpine forests with Chico, which became the lumbering center of northern California. The flume caused an economic boom that year--1877-- and caused the population of Chico to swell to about 7,000, but the flume fundamentally changed the lumber industry such that an oversupply depressed prices, and there was a boom/bust cycle every few years. Chico population dropped down to about 3,000 until well into the 20th century. (It's beside the point, but the flume company brought Chinese workers to work the sash and door factory associated with their flume, and the local white population took umbrage, eventually forming a secret society that was dedicated to murdering them outright. The Chico mass murders of 1877 so revolted eastern society that anti-Chinese sentiment in Congress was off-set for a while, and the anti-immigration mesures were probably set a decade or two back.) The forested areas east of town eventually were bought by the Diamond Match company, which still maintains a large tree farm in the area. I have a different take on the fire situation. Maybe the canyons are steeper here, but creeks have never served as a firebreak, fire just jumps right over them. During the Depression a roadway called Ponderosa Way was cut just about right at the area where the manzanita land meets the forests-- the purpose of the road was to serve as a firebreak. This road stretches from Sacramento all the way to Mount Shasta--maybe 200 miles. It's not that the fire would run up the hill and just stop at the road, but rather that the road allowed access for CCC fire crews, which could back burn so that the fire couldn't move further up into the forest. I assume that this was a taxpayer financed protection of corporate-owned tree farms up the ridge. Incidentally, I've found quite a few accounts from the 1860s when the Yahi and Yana--really the only two Indian nations resisting white encroachment-- set fire to the grasslands and manzanita lands of the lower foothills, with the expressed
Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa
Lastly, what happened to the energy question? Are fossil fuels soon running out? Are alternative energy sources viable given a chance? :-) The energy question always runs up against a wall of ignorance, I reckon. As the question is actually (as Mark never tires of telling us) more like: 'is energy available at current requirement projections at environmental costs most people can stand and at market prices compatible with those particular requirements within a capitalist context', it is rather a difficult nut to crack - lots of room for error and all that. That we're going to need the contribution of fossil fuels to humanity's energy budget to go down significantly over the next twenty years seems obvious to me. I predict the comeback of nuclear reactors, myself, but that probably won't get any of us to or from our designated production and consumption zones from and to our designated dormitory zones. In that crucial respect, a sudden surge in prices or the intensity of urban inversion blankets (I was on the apex of Sydney Harbour Bridge a few months ago, and glamorous Sydney, only a mile away, was quite invisible in its turd-like shroud - quite scary to drive into, even for an industrial-strength smoker like me) could be hard to handle, short of a retreat to government transport systems. Talk of alternatives should encompass something affordable to put under my bonnet (hood) that takes less energy to make and less energy to run. Coz, like most outside the US, I shall go through life without ever being able to afford to replace the old steed (who drinks and smokes more than I do) with something new. Haven't heard anything convincing in that line yet. Cheers, Rob.
Re: Current implications for South Africa
Mark says: The issue is their economic availability to capitalism--and the price the rest of us pays. Naturally we want to make costs of industrial inputs (fuels included) -- as well as labor power -- dearer to capitalists, monkey-wrenching the circuit of accumulation, hoping to push capital into a crisis turn it into out advantage. Hence the importance of environmental movements (be they environmental justice, protection of habitats of endangered species, or whatnot). The majority of Greens themselves -- even radical ones -- don't have such a strategic understanding, however, and it's a job of Marxists to put environmentalist concerns back into class politics vice versa. Minus the anchor of Marxist theory revolutionary project, Greens naturally gravitate toward the ideas of sustainable capitalism, Zerzan-style anarcho-primitivism, moralist anti-consumerism, other dead ends. Our job at bottom is not to help capitalists manage accumulation in a Greener fashion; our job is to make it first harder then impossible for them to manage it in any way. At 6:25 PM -0400 6/22/01, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: I don't know what the biggest risk is for capitalism: Third World upheavals, financial implosion, global warming, overcapacity, or resource constraints. None of the above -- the tendency to overaccumulation inherent in capitalism, supply bottlenecks created by neoliberalism, ecological strains on the conditions of accumulation, etc. -- in itself is a _terminal_ risk for capitalism, nor will be the combination of any or all of the above, I think. As long as there is no political force to abolish capitalism establish socialism, capital can always turn a risk into a new opportunity for further accumulation. Stagflation of the 70s was solved by union-busting in the North debt deflation deindustrialization in the South the newly capitalist East, as well as by displacing the formerly partially socialized costs of reproducing labor-power back onto the working class. Another crisis brewing now can be no doubt solved in favor of capital again (e.g., socialization of costs to write off bad loans in Japan), unless we build unified political agents to reject the anti-working-class solutions (including war fascism) that capital inevitably presents to us. Since the neoliberal solution included debt deflation deindustrialization in the South the East, naturally we want to reverse them, thereby stopping massive capital outflows from the South the East to the North which has helped the ruling class. In the North as well, the working class need to learn to demand more of all goods: higher wages, more free time, more social programs, more environmental cleanups, etc. The job of the working class, in the North or South or East, in short is to demand more, not because doing so is a viable long-term goal under capitalism, but precisely because it isn't. The more the working class organize themselves to make demands energetically, the more likely capitalism enters into another serious crisis -- in other words, the working class, by organized demands, must create a crisis turn it into its favor (= an opportunity to fight for socialism from the position of strength). Yoshie That's the political strategy I argue for. Yoshie
Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: I am pretty sure that we can, but it will require *radical* adjustments including: 1. overcoming the city-countryside split as called for in the Communist Manifesto. 2. elimination of the automobile and jet plane except for extraordinary reasons. 3. promotion of bicycles and trains and other forms of environmentally wise transportation. 4. drastic reduction in meat eating. 5. sharp cutback in fashion, luxury goods like Rolex watches, Mount Blanc pens, overseas vacations, fancy restaurants and delicatessens--ie. everything that goes into a yuppie lifestyle. In exchange for a reduction in these kinds of dubious goodies we achieve more free time and a sense of relief that we are not fucking over the rest of the world. 6. in general, less is more as Mies van der Rohe put it. 1-6 won't solve the problem, though, if fossil fuels clean water are soon running out there is no practical alternative energy source, as Mark says. How do you make bicycles run trains without fuels? http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue31/cont31.htm
Re: Current implications for South Africa
Lastly, what happened to the energy question? Are fossil fuels soon running out? Are alternative energy sources viable given a chance? :-) The energy question always runs up against a wall of ignorance, I reckon. As the question is actually (as Mark never tires of telling us) more like: 'is energy available at current requirement projections at environmental costs most people can stand and at market prices compatible with those particular requirements within a capitalist context', it is rather a difficult nut to crack - lots of room for error and all that. That we're going to need the contribution of fossil fuels to humanity's energy budget to go down significantly over the next twenty years seems obvious to me. I predict the comeback of nuclear reactors, myself, but that probably won't get any of us to or from our designated production and consumption zones from and to our designated dormitory zones. In that crucial respect, a sudden surge in prices or the intensity of urban inversion blankets (I was on the apex of Sydney Harbour Bridge a few months ago, and glamorous Sydney, only a mile away, was quite invisible in its turd-like shroud - quite scary to drive into, even for an industrial-strength smoker like me) could be hard to handle, short of a retreat to government transport systems. Talk of alternatives should encompass something affordable to put under my bonnet (hood) that takes less energy to make and less energy to run. Coz, like most outside the US, I shall go through life without ever being able to afford to replace the old steed (who drinks and smokes more than I do) with something new. Haven't heard anything convincing in that line yet. Cheers, Rob. Mark should stop putting the question as an oft-thwarted attempt at a prediction -- e.g., will energy be available at current requirement projections at environmental costs most people can stand and at market prices compatible with those particular requirements within a capitalist context? That's a perspective of a political spectator. The idea is, instead, to think like a political organizer ask, how can we *make* environmental regulations, clean-ups, thus production distribution costs of industrial inputs like energy -- as well as the value of labor power -- impossibly costly to capitalists *push* the system into a crisis *turn* it into our political advantage? Yoshie
Re: Re: recession and real estate prices
Tim Bousquet wrote: Local realtors and developers have made much out of the high cost of housing in Chico, demanding, and getting, a green light on any housing development whatsoever in the name of providing low cost housing (of course, no one ever tracks the actual prices of the developments). But it's clear to me that we are in the San Francisco market. Bay Area residents found that their homes were doubling, tripling, quadrupling in value, and they could sell them, buy a nice home in Chico next to the park for a tenth as much, and live forever on the balance. Lots of forty-ish retirees in Chico. This obviously drives up the price of housing in Chico as sellers market to the incoming retirees. Bring those speculative greenbacks down here while it's ridiculously valued, Tim. That can't last forever, either. I can do you a nice 4-bedroom, 2-toilet, 1/2 acre job within ten miles of Canberra's 'city' centre for US$ 120 000 and the same in Hobart for US$30 000 less than that - and that's at the peak of our markets (wait a year to buy and you should save a fortune!). No dirty air, all-day electricity (you'll be ahead of the game when the same problems do hit our recently privatised utilities), your kiddies come home from school without bullets in 'em, no karnal bunt in your loaf, no earthquakes, a national health scheme, free education up to matriculation, lager that doesn't taste at all like Budweiser catpiss, a culture which professes to hate American culture but hangs on every American's words, and we've only just discovered our big aquifer, so we haven't had a chance to drain and foul it yet - and if you're prone to homesickness, nearly every job you can get here will be for the same company you'd work for at home, and there's just enough American telly to convince you of the wisdom of your decision. Nearly every Yank I meet here sez it's just like America used to be (although they can never quite arrive at a date) but without a sense it's going anywhere (the more unbearable ones call this naive and unambitious, but the better ones know a good thing when they see it). Come to think of it, we still have journalism outlets who respect the likes of you. Come and get it while it's hot, pen-pals! Why not pick up a mining company while you're here? First-world comfort and complacency at third-world prices for all holders of the formidable greenback. Australia ... the intelligent Californian's new Chico. Cheers, Rob.
Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa
Yoshie: Mark should stop putting the question as an oft-thwarted attempt at a prediction -- e.g., will energy be available at current requirement projections at environmental costs most people can stand and at market prices compatible with those particular requirements within a capitalist context? That's a perspective of a political spectator. No more so than Marx reading and writing about the soil fertility crisis of the 19th century. His answer to this was not activism in the narrow sense but a maximalist call in the Communist Manifesto for the reconcilement of city and countryside. The idea is, instead, to think like a political organizer ask, how can we *make* environmental regulations, clean-ups, thus production distribution costs of industrial inputs like energy -- as well as the value of labor power -- impossibly costly to capitalists *push* the system into a crisis *turn* it into our political advantage? No, this is inadequate. The questions we are dealing with exist on an overarching basis and have little to do with organizing people. For that matter, you can a completely wrong analysis of the overarching questions--as David Harvey does--but have the right response on activism, which he does. In reality, Marxism has failed to keep pace with ecological questions since the 1920s when early attempts at such an understanding in the USSR were short circuited during the mad rush to industrialize in the face of the fascist menace. That being said, some of the outstanding Marxist ecologists of the 20th century made their mark during this period. There are important theoretical questions that have to be sorted out. Not only do you have David Harvey's peculiar take on the question--stating blandly that there is nothing you can do to destroy the planet through pollution, etc.--but you also have Jim O'Connor's second contradiction thesis which has been attacked by Burkett and Foster. Although I tend to agree with these two, I think that much of their analysis revolves around a scholastic defense of the proposition that Marx was an ecological thinker. While this is true, it is inadequate to the challenge facing us. In general the most probing analyses of the environmental crisis comes from organizations like the Worldwatch Institute. Because of theoretical failings and institutional weakness, our movement has not been able to offer a counter-analysis to Worldwatch. This would require scientists with a leftwing orientation to tackle questions like fossil fuels, water utilization, industrial farming, environmentally linked illnesses such as cancer and asthma, deforestation, species disappearance, etc. Not only must these questions be addressed, they must be related to each other in a comprehensive materialist fashion. Marxists are not just activists. They are scientists. While economists obviously have a duty to understand the financial/economic crisis of the last few years as evidenced by Brenner's NLR article and all the various responses to it, our movement also needs people like Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin to write articles in the popular and specialized press about the mounting ecological crisis. Ultimately this form of high-level analysis will be linked to activism, but only in the manner that Marx's writings on the operations of the capitalist economy became linked eventually to the formation of the First Communist International. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
FT on the slump
Going backwards The optimism about a rapid recovery from the global downturn has begun to dissipate, say Alan Beattie and Peronet Despeignes Published: June 22 2001 18:42GMT | Last Updated: June 22 2001 18:51GMT Edward Robertson, managing director of Peterson Springs UK, is discovering the hard way how US economic gloom can spread round the world. January and February were good months for us but things turned bad in April - and in June the bottom has dropped out, says Mr Robertson, whose company is a subsidiary of a US-owned manufacturer. Mr Robertson is not alone. The air of modest optimism among companies and investors in Europe and the US about the ability of the global economy to recover has begun to dissipate. Share prices are once again on the slide and a series of profit warnings from companies has cast doubt on the likelihood of a rapid economic recovery. On Friday the Ifo survey of confidence among German employers reached its lowest point for two years. Forecasts for euro-zone growth in 2001, collected by Consensus Economics, have dropped steadily from an average of 3 per cent in December to 2.3 per cent in June and are likely to fall further. Mr Robertson, whose company exports 30 per cent of its output, says: The US slowdown has affected German confidence; that has affected us and hence there is a general malaise. The US is clearly the key. A run of profit warnings in the past two weeks has battered equities, in a reminder of the gloomy run-up to the first-quarter earnings season. Companies as diverse as McDonald's, the fast-food chain, JDS Uniphase, the fibre-optics parts supplier, and HJ Heinz, the food manufacturer, have issued warnings. They were on Friday joined by Merck, the US pharmaceuticals group. Stephen Weiting, an analyst at Salomon Smith Barney in New York, titled his latest report on the US economy: Help! I've fallen and I can't get up. He predicts two years of zero earnings growth for US companies after several years of rapid rises. The SP 500 share index rallied to reach 1,312 on May 21 but has since slid 6 per cent. Thomas Mayer, an economist with Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt, also notices a distinct deterioration in euro-zone investor sentiment over the past few weeks. In conjunction with the US, and on the back of worries about the local situation, investors are pretty scared, he says. Euro-zone stocks have followed US shares lower since the end of May, as have those in the UK. The pattern of the decline in sentiment shows this is more than just a correction in new technology sectors. Weakness in such shares has spread to old-economy stalwarts. Thursday's profit warning from the German chemicals giant BASF showed that companies reliant on a cyclical upswing in the global economy were no longer a haven for investors. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the start of the year, just before the US Federal Reserve quickly cut interest rates to give markets and companies a boost. This is deja` vu all over again, said Ken Goldstein, an economist with the Conference Board, the New York-based business research organisation. The Fed is expected to cut rates again next week, which may once again boost confidence and put a floor under stock prices. But with the gloom spreading, some fear that central banks may be reaching the limits of their ability to prevent a prolonged global slowdown. The worry is that the Fed's interest rate cuts have failed to solve the economy's underlying problem. Consumers remain heavily in debt and companies wallow in unsold inventory in spite of big write-offs by technology companies. Business inventories of unsold goods are larger than at any time over the past two years and the share of US production capacity lying idle has risen to its highest level in nearly two decades. The Bank for International Settlements recently published a sobering report noting that falls in private-sector net saving on the scale that the US has experienced - minus 6.5 per cent of gross domestic product in 2000 - have almost always been followed by sharp falls in economic growth two years later. Interest rate cuts from the Fed may yet pull the US economy out of the dip, particularly if productivity growth holds up and new investment opportunities are created. Fed officials have signalled that they expect to keep cutting rates until the economy shows signs of responding - and markets expect another quarter- to half-point cut. But the Fed is constrained by the prospect that it could reignite inflation if it acts too aggressively. There is little sign of either Japan or Europe taking on the role of driving global growth. Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's prime minister, has announced ambitious plans for economic reform and restructuring. But Japan's partners in the Group of Seven industrialised countries fear that while these reforms may be good for the country's long-term health, they reduce the chance of a short-term recovery. The weakest global link is likely to be Japan.
Re: Re: recession and real estate prices
Tim is correct. It may be that the continued strength in the Chico real estate market might be from people cashing out ASAP from the Bay Area -- although many of the refugees come from the southern part of the state. So, it could be that the strength in the rural real estate could be consistent with the faltering Bay Area market. I might mention that while the influx of refugees increases the monetary value of Chico real estate, it lowers the real value. Traffic gets worse and worse each year. On Mon, Jun 25, 2001 at 07:35:45AM -0700, Tim Bousquet wrote: Local realtors and developers have made much out of the high cost of housing in Chico, demanding, and getting, a green light on any housing development whatsoever in the name of providing low cost housing (of course, no one ever tracks the actual prices of the developments). But it's clear to me that we are in the San Francisco market. Bay Area residents found that their homes were doubling, tripling, quadrupling in value, and they could sell them, buy a nice home in Chico next to the park for a tenth as much, and live forever on the balance. Lots of forty-ish retirees in Chico. This obviously drives up the price of housing in Chico as sellers market to the incoming retirees. I imagine this process will even speed up with the dot-com downturn, as people leave the industry entirely. Can't go on forever, though. tim --- Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The collapse of the dot.coms has cut real estate prices in San Francisco, but the previous momentum is still pushing prices up in Sacramento -- about 90 miles away. Chico prices -- about 160 miles from San Francisco -- seem to have leveled out, the realators in the sauna tell me. Is there much information about how recessions propagate across regions within a single economy? I read about the synchronization of world economic cycles, yet the lags seem relatively long, even within the N. Cal. economy. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] = Subscribe to ChicoLeft by emailing [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChicoLeft Subscribe to the Chico Examiner for only $30 annually or $20 for six months. Mail cash or check payabe to Tim Bousquet to POBox 4627, Chico CA 95927 __ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Economic Reporting Review, 6/25/01
Economic Reporting Review, June 25, 2001 By Dean Baker You can sign up to receive ERR every week by sending a subscribe ERR email request to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can find the latest ERR at http://www.tompaine.com/news/2000/10/02/index.html . All ERR prior to August are archived at http://www.fair.org/err. All ERR after August are archived at www.tompaine.com. *** OUTSTANDING STORIES OF THE WEEK Wall St. Advocacy Group Gets White House Help, by John Mintz in the Washington Post, June 17, 2001, page A2. This article reports on Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's cooperation with a financial industry lobbying group, which seeks to privatize Social Security. The article notes the peculiarity of the relationship, since O'Neill is a trustee of the Social Security system, with a fiduciary responsibility to it. O'Neill Faults 'No Assets' Social Security, by Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post, June 19, 2001, page E1. This article reports on a speech on Social Security that Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill gave before a group of financial industry executives in New York. In the speech, O'Neill asserted that Social Security has no assets. The article points out that as Treasury Secretary, O'Neill is also a trustee of the Social Security program. In that capacity he signed the most recent trustees' report, which shows that the system has more than $900 billion in assets. States Expecting to Lose Billions from Repeal of U.S. Estate Tax, by Kevin Sack in the New York Times, June 21, 2001, page A1. This article examines the amount of revenue that states are expecting to lose over the next decade as a result of the recent change in the federal estate tax. The article points out that in many states the loss will be quite significant, with the total loss projected at 1.5 percent of projected state revenue over the next decade. The article also emphasizes the percentage of projected revenue that will be lost, rather the dollar amount. The percentage of revenue is a far more meaningful number to most readers. Future May Be More Uncertain for Technology, by Gretchen Morgenson in the New York Times, June 20, 2001, page C1. This article reports on the findings of a new study by Merrill Lynch, which indicates that the reported profits of many leading tech companies may be significantly overstated. The main factors noted in the study were that firms did not write off the value of stock options issued to their employees as expenses, and they were able to deduct from their taxes the cost of buying shares (to maintain the stock price) when these options were redeemed. While these practices could inflate profits in a rapidly rising stock market, the sharp stock declines in this sector means that reported profits are likely to be far lower in the future. It is worth noting that some economists had called attention to these sorts of accounting problems in the past (e.g. The Costs of the Stock Market Bubble, by Dean Baker, www.cepr.net/stock_market_bubble.htm). STEEL PRICES AND THE FREE MARKET Of Politics, Free Markets, and Tending Society, by Tom Redburn in the New York Times, June 17, 2001, Section 3, page 4. This thoughtful article examines the factors that led President Bush to take steps to protect the domestic steel industry. At several points it asserts that South Korea's steel industry is more efficient than the U.S. industry because it can sell its steel more cheaply. This is not clear. The Clinton and Bush administrations have both pursued a high dollar policy, under which the dollar has risen 20-30 percent above a sustainable level. In the short-run this policy has the effect of reducing the price of imports by approximately 20-30 percent. In the long-run, the policy cannot be sustained, since it is causing the United States to borrow approximately $450 billion a year from abroad. This level of borrowing clearly cannot be maintained for more than a few years. When the dollar falls back to a sustainable level, it is not clear that South Korean steel will still be cheaper than steel made in the United States. THE TRADE DEFICIT Trade Gap Narrowed in April, Business in Brief (compiled from wire service reports and Washington Post staff writers), Washington Post, June 22, 2001, page E2. Weak Demand Helps Reduce Trade Deficit, by Bloomberg News in the New York Times, June 16, 2001, page C6. These articles report on the Commerce Department's release of trade data for April and revised data for March. The headlines are both somewhat misleading. The deficit figure reported for April was somewhat lower than the revised figure reported for March, but this was only due to the fact that the March figure was revised upward by nearly $2 billion. The April deficit was more than $1 billion larger than the deficit that had originally been reported for March, and was higher than the figure that most analysts had expected for April. It is also worth noting that the upward revision in the March deficit
Yellow River: Faustian lock-in?
Marshall Berman on Faust 'The Developer' Suddenly Faust springs up enraged: Why should men let things go on being the way they have always been? Isn't it about time for mankind to assert itself against nature's tyrannical arrogance, to confront natural forces in the name of 'the free spirit that protects all rights'? It is outrageous that, for all the vast energy expended by the sea, it merely surges endlessly back and forth-- 'and nothing is achieved!' 'This drives me near to desperate distress! Such elemental power unharnessed, purposeless! There dares my spirit soar past all it knew; Here I would fight, this I would subdue!' ...the Faustian enterprise will be less quixotic and more fruitful, because it will draw on nature's own energy and organize that energy into the fuel for new collective human purposes and projects of which archaic kings could hardly have dreamt 'And it is possible!...Fast in my mind, plan upon plan unfolds'. Suddenly the landscape around him metamorphoses into a site. He outlines great reclamation projects to harness the sea for human purposes: man-made harbors and canals that can move ships full of goods and men; dams for large-scale irrigation; green fields and forests, pastures and gardens, a vast and intensive agriculture; waterpower to attract and support emerging industries; thriving settlements, new towns and cities to come -- and all this to be created out of a barren wasteland where humans have never dared to live 'Daily they would vainly storm, Pick and shovel, stroke for stroke; Where the flames would nightly swarm Was a dam when we awoke. Human sacrifices bled, Tortured screams would pierce the night, And where blazes seaward spread A canal would greet the light' He has replaced a barren, sterile economy with a dynamic new one that will 'open up space for many millions/ To live, not securely, but free for action' In order to understand the developer's tragedy, we must judge his vision of the world not only by what it sees -- by the immense new horizons it opens up for mankind -- but also by what it does not see: what human realities it refuses to look at, what potentialities it cannot bear to face Faust becomes obsessed with this old couple and their little piece of land: 'That aged couple should have yielded, / I want their lindens in my grip, / Since these few trees that are denied me / Undo my worldwide ownership...Hence is our soul upon the rack, / To feel, amid plenty, what we lack'. Faust commits his first self-consciously evil act. He summons Mephisto and his 'mighty men' and orders them to get the old people out of the way. He does not want to see it, or to know the details of how it is done. But now he has staked his whole identity on the will to change, and on his power to fulfill that will, his bond with his past petrifies him. 'That bell, those lindens' sweet perfume Enfolds me like a church or tomb' For the developer, to stop moving, to rest in the shadows, to let the old people enfold him, is death (pp 60-69)
Re: Current implications for South Africa
At 11:49 AM -0400 6/25/01, Louis Proyect wrote: The questions we are dealing with exist on an overarching basis and have little to do with organizing people. The environmental questions had better be posed with a view to organizing people pushing for socialism. It appears, btw, that South Africa has gone out of the window in this thread, despite the subject line. Poor Comrade Bond is on his own again. :- At 11:49 AM -0400 6/25/01, Louis Proyect wrote: Mark should stop putting the question as an oft-thwarted attempt at a prediction -- e.g., will energy be available at current requirement projections at environmental costs most people can stand and at market prices compatible with those particular requirements within a capitalist context? That's a perspective of a political spectator. No more so than Marx reading and writing about the soil fertility crisis of the 19th century. His answer to this was not activism in the narrow sense but a maximalist call in the Communist Manifesto for the reconcilement of city and countryside. * The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production. These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1848-CM/cm.html Evidently, Marx Engels even in 1848 didn't think that the abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country could be brought about overnight. Cuba, even with its turn to urban gardens organic agriculture (compelled by the collapse of the Eastern bloc the US embargo), is still a heavily urbanized country, probably with only 20% or less of the population living in the countryside. While the production of vegetables improved much due to the reorganization of agriculture in Cuba, it has yet to become able to move beyond rationing, many Cubans depend upon access to dollars for necessities. In fact, it is probably very difficult for any one nation to reconcile town country, since the division between
Marxism and ecology
Yoshie: rationing, many Cubans depend upon access to dollars for necessities. In fact, it is probably very difficult for any one nation to reconcile town country, since the division between town country has an international dimension. No kidding. And let's not forget that Marx also argued for [e]xtension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, whether you like it or not. Geez, I did not know that. We can't destroy the planet but we can destroy our habitat -- through war pollution -- enough to make it largely inhabitable for humans. I'm not familiar with Burkett's Foster's attacks upon Jim O'Connor's idea of second contradiction. You might discuss it here. They think that capitalism will not go off the rails because of environmental contradictions. In any case, I have my own views and allow others to think what they want. That's what makes politics interesting. Dialectical Materialism and Ecology Recent reading has convinced me that it is time to reconsider dialectical materialism, the unjustly maligned attempt by Marx and Engels to provide a unified analysis of society and nature. Dialectical materialism has gotten a bad reputation from its use in Soviet apologetics, but, despite this, an updated version can provide insights into the environmental crisis that historical materialism simply can not. Jean-Guy Vaillancourt's essay Marx and Ecology: More Benedictine than Franciscan is contained in the collection The Greening of Marxism (Guilford, 1996) raises this question in a most perceptive way. (By the way, there's an essay by this guy named Michael Perelman titled Marx and Resource Scarcity in there as well. It's pretty gosh-darned good.) Vaillancourt singles out Engels's Anti-Duhring and the Dialectics of Nature for special consideration since they are more directly concerned with nature and ecology than any of the previous writings of Marx and Engels. They are also considered bulwarks of dialectical materialist thought. The Dialectics of Nature contains the famous chapter The Role of Work in Transforming Ape into Man. Most people are quite familiar with the paragraph that describes how the conquest of nature can have unexpected results: Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons. Those who spread the potato in Europe were not aware that with these farinaceous tubers they were at the same time spreading scrofula. Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature -- but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly. What is less frequently quoted is the paragraph which immediately follows: And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more this progresses the more will humanity not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, humanity and nature, soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity. When Engels states we will know our oneness with nature, he is really hearkening back to the classical materialist roots of Marxism. After all, Marx wrote his PhD thesis on the
California Drought
If I understand the global warming models correctly, this situation will be normal in California within a decade or so. Sending bottled water to farmers may be nice but it's no way to run an economy. Farming is dead in the far north, for good, apparently. tim Siskiyou County running dry Scott, Shasta river conditions are life threatening to salmon Redding Record-Searchlight - 6/23/01 By Jim Schultz, staff writer YREKA - Siskiyou County, caught in the grips of its worst drought since 1936, is a county under siege. It's getting horrible, Siskiyou County Supervisor Bill Overman of Yreka said Friday. It's drier than the dickens. With no end in sight, 44 wells have gone dry in Scott and Little Shasta valleys in north central Siskiyou County, and others are close to being dry, he said. We fear there will be a lot more before summer's out, Overman said. Earlier this week, Grizz Adams, head of the county's Office of Emergency Services, told supervisors that he expects that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) may soon step in to help fund emergency relief operations. But, Adams said Friday, he's not sure exactly what the nature of that aid would be. I have no idea, he said. It's kind of the million-dollar question. Adams said the county may have to step in to ensure that residents have water. But it could get to the point where we might have to hire water trucks to get water to people, he said, adding that such help would present a nightmare of logistical problems. In the meantime, the county has agreed to waive a variety of fees so those with wells that have gone dry can be deepened, said Overman. Meanwhile, two Mount Shasta water bottling companies - Crystal Geyser and Dannon - have donated 48 pallets of bottled drinking water for those whose wells have failed. They have been very generous, Overman said. Last month, Siskiyou County was declared as a state and federal disaster area due to its drought conditions, but a presidential disaster declaration has yet been issued, said Adams. Adams, who noted that the Klamath Basin has been reeling since irrigation water was nearly cut off to farmers by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to protect endangered fish, said he's trying to treat the Klamath Basin and the water emergency in the Scott and Little Shasta valleys separately. But, he agreed, Siskiyou County's drought will only get worse in the weeks and months ahead, and perhaps longer, noting that the small community of Etna has contacted him for water conservation information. It's just started, said Adams. I'm not sure what we're going to do. Meanwhile, state Department of Fish and Game officials told the San Francisco Chronicle that irrigation by Siskiyou County ranchers is decimating salmon and steelhead populations on California's second biggest river system, but they are not implementing a state law that could stop the diversions. Ranchers have diverted most of the flow of the Scott and Shasta rivers in Siskiyou County to irrigate alfalfa fields and pastures, leaving thousands of young salmon and steelhead without enough water and facing imminent death. But agency officials say they are being told not to cite offenders out of concern that cooperative restoration projects between the state and ranchers on the Scott and Shasta Rivers would end instantly if the law were enforced. We've got five or six thousand steelhead trout dead on the Scott, and (dead juvenile steelhead) everywhere on the Shasta, Warden Renie Cleland said. The Scott has been sucked dry, and the Shasta reduced to a trickle at its juncture with the Klamath. Temperatures in the river have reached or exceeded the level considered lethal for salmon species, which favor cold water. Thousands of fish have died and thousands of others face imminent death. Everything has died, Fish and Game Captain Chuck Konvalin said of the Scott River, according to the Chronicle. The system has been dried up.# = Subscribe to ChicoLeft by emailing [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChicoLeft Subscribe to the Chico Examiner for only $30 annually or $20 for six months. Mail cash or check payabe to Tim Bousquet to POBox 4627, Chico CA 95927 __ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
Re: Current implications for South Africa
Yoshie Furuhashi Mark should stop putting the question as an oft-thwarted attempt at a prediction -- e.g., will energy be available at current requirement projections at environmental costs most people can stand and at market prices compatible with those particular requirements within a capitalist context? Yoshie, please don't put words in my mouth. I haven't said this or anything like this. Mark Jones You may have intended something entirely different, but that's how Rob many of us heard it. Communication (which isn't a one-way affair) is after all part of politics, so we got to work on it, too. It's often a matter of wrong accents, inflections, etc. rather than wrong themes -- for instance, energy is obviously an important theme of Marxist discussion, in which more should become interested. Yoshie
Re: California Drought
Tim Bousquet wrote: If I understand the global warming models correctly Forget about global warming! Alex Cockburn reassures us there's nothing to worry about: http://nypress.com/14/25/newscolumns/wildjustice.cfm. Doug
Re: California Drought
If I understand the global warming models correctly, this situation will be normal in California within a decade or so. Sending bottled water to farmers may be nice but it's no way to run an economy. Farming is dead in the far north, for good, apparently. tim This is exactly the sort of thing that symbolizes the deepening environmental crisis. You have the following things interacting with each other: 1. growth of cities in what amounts to desert conditions (Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc.) requires water-based energy to be diverted into air conditioning, lawn sprinklers, golf courses, etc. 2. such cities are car-based by their nature. SUV's, the car of choice in such yahoo locales, were responsible for 15 percent of the increase in greenhouse emissions last year. 3. food supplies to such cities involves agribusiness suplies from out-of-state either in California or Mexico. by their nature, crops are subject to pesticides, chemical fertilizers and irrigation, all of which seriously degrade the environment. 4. water diverted to hydroelectric dams and irrigation causes rivers to dry up, thus leading to the extinction of valuable fish. What a fuggin mess. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Current implications for South Africa
Doug posted: Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: I am pretty sure that we can, but it will require *radical* adjustments including: 1. overcoming the city-countryside split as called for in the Communist Manifesto. 2. elimination of the automobile and jet plane except for extraordinary reasons. 3. promotion of bicycles and trains and other forms of environmentally wise transportation. 4. drastic reduction in meat eating. 5. sharp cutback in fashion, luxury goods like Rolex watches, Mount Blanc pens, overseas vacations, fancy restaurants and delicatessens--ie. everything that goes into a yuppie lifestyle. In exchange for a reduction in these kinds of dubious goodies we achieve more free time and a sense of relief that we are not fucking over the rest of the world. 6. in general, less is more as Mies van der Rohe put it. 1-6 won't solve the problem, though, if fossil fuels clean water are soon running out there is no practical alternative energy source, as Mark says. How do you make bicycles run trains without fuels? http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue31/cont31.htm I have yet to browse through the entire issue, but are you pointing to the following? * Nader vs. the Big Rock Candy Mountain Jesse Lemisch [from New Politics, vol. 8, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 31, Summer 2001] ... I SUPPORTED RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT IN 2000. Nonetheless, I think that in some ways Nader and the Greens offer a bad model for the future of independent politicsHere is my criticism, first in summary: Nader and the Greens abstemiously turned their backs on people's reasonable and deeply human longings for abundance, joy, cornucopia, variety and mobility, substituting instead a puritanical asceticism that romanticizes hardship, scarcity, localism and underdevelopment -- a traditionalism that blinds us to the possibility of utopia. I see in this complex, vestiges of an Old Left/New Left puritanism, a continuing quest for a kind of a faux working-class authenticity and a reaffirmation of the Protestant Ethic. Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism continues to have much to tell us about puritanical asceticism. A lot of this austere and abstinent complex has been seen as just a quirk of Nader's character, but it's more pervasive than that. Many of us who gave general support to Nader nonetheless saw and spoke -- as Landy and I did in our pro-Nader petition -- of serious problems in his views on abortion, race and gender. Some friendly critics spoke of Nader's tin ear or blind spot in these areas. But these are not just blind spots or imperfections in an otherwise good program, but rather add up to a coherent and systemic component of Nader's thought, rooted in a Gitlinesque horror of identity politics. Nader's contempt for what he called gonadal politics is as deep as Todd Gitlin's contempt for identity politics, and despite the political gap between them, there is an interesting congruence on this. Similarly, a romance of parsimoniousness and asceticism is not just a quirkiness of individual Greens but rather permeates Green thought. (In this paper I often speak simultaneously about Nader and about different kinds of Greens. Obviously, there are differences. But to deny the fundamental consensus among them on asceticism is to throw out all reasonable generalization. The central point is not whether there is explicit and total agreement, but whether these beliefs are ever questioned. My experience and reading indicate that these values are hegemonic and are publicly unquestioned among Greens.) Such blinders leave the left incapable of tangling with many difficult questions that independent politics should face: What, after all, is the matter with food in abundance, and wonderful material goods? Might globalization, under popular control, be a good thing, or is it intrinsically and inevitably bad? Might large-scale agriculture, under different conditions, be a good thing? How can it be that in 2000 Nader still believed in the family farm as what he anachronistically called the cultural backbone of America? Why do we hear so much about such archaic notions as self-reliance? Are TV, Viagra, Prozac and tourism necessarily, as Nader thinks, bad things? What about cars? Even if we were to deal successfully with pollution, I just don't think that Greens would accept, much less delight in, the utopian potential of the easy mobility given to us by cars ...Do demographic and other data support Green notions of scarcity, or does the Green mystique of scarcity precede investigation of the realities? Are Green ideas of sustainability sometimes rooted in apparent givens that turn out in fact to be political choices? For instance, would population decrease with increased education for women and increased social and cultural rewards for female roles other than motherhood? Empirical study after empirical study seems to support this conclusion, which
Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue31/cont31.htm I have yet to browse through the entire issue, but are you pointing to the following? Yes, sorry, wrong link. It should have been http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue31/lemisc31.htm. Lemisch wrote in an earlier NP piece http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue29/lemisc29.htm: At Foundry on April 14, Nader spoke out, rightly, for vaccination, but attacked Viagra and Prozac, apparently seen as only life-style frivolities. From the audience, Joanne Landy (a Nader supporter) cried out -- as is her custom in such situations, particularly in large domed spaces -- Whatsamatta with Viagra!!? The gentle sound wafted toward the dome of the beautiful church; two days later, at the Ellipse, Nader delivered the same speech, but without the offending passages. But they are likely to come back. There is, with Nader, a strong ascetic streak which is very much in the American grain, but also very much out of touch with the cultural revolution wrought by the sixties. Even Oprah knows better than Ralph Nader. (As Landy points out, half seriously, a Nader presidency could leave us depressed, in our mud huts, suffering from erectile dysfunction -- and possibly without any tv to watch.) There's a way in which a certain kind of environmentalism seems like depressive misanthropy made into a political program. Doug
Jesse Lemisch
Jesse Lemisch [from New Politics, vol. 8, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 31, Summer 2001] ... I SUPPORTED RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT IN 2000. Nonetheless, I think that in some ways Nader and the Greens offer a bad model for the future of independent politicsHere is my criticism, first in summary: Nader and the Greens abstemiously turned their backs on people's reasonable and deeply human longings for abundance, joy, cornucopia, variety and mobility, Abundance, joy, corncupia, variety and mobility? I think that's what most NY'ers like Lemisch enjoy right now, while their taxes go to pay for a CIA and military that denies it to the rest of the world. What, after all, is the matter with food in abundance, and wonderful material goods? Might globalization, under popular control, be a good thing, or is it intrinsically and inevitably bad? Might large-scale agriculture, under different conditions, be a good thing? This is not what Marx argued in v.3 of Capital, but Lemisch's connections to Marxism seems tangential at best. How can it be that in 2000 Nader still believed in the family farm as what he anachronistically called the cultural backbone of America? Why do we hear so much about such archaic notions as self-reliance? Because people feel appalled by the kind of cancer epidemics industrial farming produces? Are TV, Viagra, Prozac and tourism necessarily, as Nader thinks, bad things? What about cars? Even if we were to deal successfully with pollution, I just don't think that Greens would accept, much less delight in, the utopian potential of the easy mobility given to us by cars Don't forget fox-hunting. You haven't lived until you ride across the bog on a foggy morning in your red suit, blowing your horn. ...Do demographic and other data support Green notions of scarcity, or does the Green mystique of scarcity precede investigation of the realities? Are Green ideas of sustainability sometimes rooted in apparent givens that turn out in fact to be political choices? There are only so many blue-finned tuna in the ocean. With fishing boats made from converted sonar-equipped WWII sub hunters, they will rapidly disappear. This has nothing to do with Malthus, but common sense. So it's not clear whether the real limits of what the earth can produce cause the ascetic complex, or whether the ideology comes first, a priori, focusing attention on the limits rather than the possibilities. What ever became of the notion of planning -- figuring out how to accomplish social goals, especially with newer technologies?... Right new technologies. Let's clone blue-fin tuna. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
WTO/AIDS
Monday June 25, 1:34 pm Eastern Time U.S. Withdraws WTO Patents Case U.S. Withdraws WTO Patents Case Against Brazil Over Law to Ensure Cheap AIDS Drugs By NAOMI KOPPEL Associated Press Writer GENEVA (AP) -- The United States has withdrawn a complaint with the World Trade Organization over a law used by Brazil to ensure cheap drugs to fight AIDS, a Brazilian trade negotiator said Monday. Jose Alfredo Graca Lima told reporters the two countries had ``come to an understanding'' over a law that requires owners of Brazilian patents to manufacture their products in Brazil rather than import them. If this is not done, the law gives the Brazilian government the right to license the manufacturing rights to another producer. ``It is a victory for both sides, a victory for common sense,'' he said. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, speaking in Washington, insisted the U.S. case had nothing to do with AIDS drugs. Under WTO rules, there are procedures for governments to force local production of patented drugs if the country is experiencing a health emergency like the HIV/AIDS epidemic, he said. The United States went to the WTO in February to complain that Brazil's 1996 industrial property law violates patent protection rules. Brazil maintained that its laws are acceptable under WTO rules. The Nobel Prize-winning charity Medicins Sans Frontieres -- also known as Doctors Without Borders -- said the Brazilian government's program allowed it to offer free treatment to more than 90,000 patients, and this would be threatened if Brazil had to accept higher-priced imported drugs. Graca Lima said Brazil had agreed with Washington that it would give 10 days' notice before it used compulsory licensing under the law, to give time for consultations. The WTO agreed last week to look into whether its rules protecting drug patents can become more flexible to address concerns by developing countries and health activists that the regulations prevent vital medicines reaching the poor.
Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)
So it's not clear whether the real limits of what the earth can produce cause the ascetic complex, or whether the ideology comes first, a priori, focusing attention on the limits rather than the possibilities. What ever became of the notion of planning -- figuring out how to accomplish social goals, especially with newer technologies?... Right new technologies. Let's clone blue-fin tuna. Louis Proyect Cuban socialists aren't opposed to genetic engineering per se, though I don't know if they like eatin' tuna doubt that they are sanguine about trends in corporate genetic engineering. :- * EJB Electronic Journal of Biotechnology Papers accepted from next issue of August 15th, 2001 Tilapia chromosomal growth hormone gene expression accelerates growth in transgenic zebrafish (Danio rerio) Reynold Morales, Mammalian Cell Genetics Division. Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. PO Box 6162, Havana, Cuba. María Teresa Herrera, Department of Animal and Human Biology. Faculty of Biology. University of Havana. 25th street No. 455, Havana 10400, Cuba. Amílcar Arenal, Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. PO Box 387, Camagüey 1, Cuba. Asterio Cruz, Division of Quality Control and Assurance. Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. PO Box 6162, Havana, Cuba. Oscar Hernández, Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. PO Box 387, Camagüey 1, Cuba. Rafael Pimentel, Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. PO Box 387, Camagüey 1, Cuba. Isabel Guillén, Mammalian Cell Genetics Division. Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. PO Box 6162, Havana, Cuba. Rebeca Martínez, Mammalian Cell Genetics Division. Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. PO Box 6162, Havana, Cuba. Mario P Estrada, Mammalian Cell Genetics Division. Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. PO Box 6162, Havana, Cuba. http://www.ejb.org/content/next/# * * EJB Electronic Journal of Biotechnology ISSN: 0717-3458 Vol.1 No.3, Issue of December 15, 1998. © 1998 by Universidad Católica de Valparaíso -- Chile INVITED REVIEW ARTICLE Agrobacterium tumefaciens: a natural tool for plant transformation Gustavo A. de la Riva* Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology. Plant Division. Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB). P.O.Box 6162, 10600 Havana, Cuba Fax: (53-7) 218070, (53-7) 336008 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Joel González-Cabrera Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology. Plant Division. Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB). P.O.Box 6162, 10600 Havana, Cuba Fax: (53-7) 218070, (53-7) 336008 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Roberto Vázquez-Padrón Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology. Plant Division. Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB). P.O.Box 6162, 10600 Havana, Cuba Fax: (53-7) 218070, (53-7) 336008 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Camilo Ayra-Pardo Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology. Plant Division. Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB). P.O.Box 6162, 10600 Havana, Cuba Fax: (53-7) 218070, (53-7) 336008 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Corresponding author Keywords: Agrobacterium tumefaciens, Plant transformation, T-DNA Abstract Updated information of mechanisms for T-DNA transfer to plant cells by Agrobacterium tumefaciens is provided, focused on the role played by the different components of the virulence system. The general assessments for the establishment of efficient transformation protocols are discussed with an emphasis in the application of this methodology to monocotyledonous plants. Based on our own experience, we present the establishment of sugarcane transformation by A. tumefaciens as a model of application of this methodology to an important culture plant species, previously considered recalcitrant and inaccessible for this type of genetic manipulation. http://www.ejb.org/content/vol1/issue3/abstract/1/index.html * See also Tim Wheeler, Cuba Takes Lead in Genetic Engineering, Biotechnology, _People's Weekly World_ 14 December 1996 at http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/176.html. Yoshie
Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)
Yoshie: Cuban socialists aren't opposed to genetic engineering per se, though I don't know if they like eatin' tuna doubt that they are sanguine about trends in corporate genetic engineering. :- Cubans also use nuclear power. In any case, it does not make sense to extrapolate from the economic development model of a besieged island bereft of its main trading partner, except to say that you are always better off eliminating the profit motive--this despite the seething hostility of social democrats like Sam Farber who has written screeds against Cuba for New Politics. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
environmental demands
I don't think anybody here is a real expert on ecology -- I hope that I am wrong. I think that we have made demands on the environment that go well beyond sustainability. I assume that there is general agreement there. I assume that we some mix of 3 possibilities ahead of us. 1. Superior technology to the rescue. I am skeptical about how far we can go with that one. But there are some things we can do. Sprawl, for example, is a major culprit, but to fight it requires a tremendous political will. You can make the cities more liveable -- but that probably means chasing the poor out. 2. Do with less -- meaning horrible fights over who gets what -- sure to bring out the worst in all of us. Patrick B. has reminded us of the standard market solution: price the poor out of the market. 3. Let things go to hell. Since none of us have all the answers, we should at least be tolerant of those who make suggestions, and make our own suggestions without arrogance. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION
From the establishment of the English colony of Jamestown in 1607, there was uninterrupted and widespread environmental destruction. Within a few generations, the great forests of the Northeast were leveled, and not long after the Civil War logging companies started deforesting the Midwest at such a rapid rate that within 40 years an area the size of Europe had been stripped, including much of Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. For instance, by 1897, sawmills in Michigan had processed 160 billion board feet of white pine leaving less than 6 billion board feet standing in the entire state. mat
Fw: Jesse Lemisch
- Original Message - From: Jesse Lemisch [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 12:50 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L:13969] Jesse Lemisch Thanks for sending this to me. It's amazing in its inability to come to terms with a serious argument. I'm not on the list this was apparently posted on, and don't know whether I care to reply -- but if I did, I'd appreciate knowing how I would do so. Or, it would be nice if somebody posted my article, which is available at www.wpunj.edu/newpol Jesse - Original Message - From: Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 3:11 PM Subject: Fw: [PEN-L:13969] Jesse Lemisch I'm sure you've seen Lou intervene at the NY Marxist School or the Brecht Forum! Michael Pugliese - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 11:59 AM Subject: [PEN-L:13969] Jesse Lemisch Jesse Lemisch [from New Politics, vol. 8, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 31, Summer 2001] ... I SUPPORTED RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT IN 2000. Nonetheless, I think that in some ways Nader and the Greens offer a bad model for the future of independent politicsHere is my criticism, first in summary: Nader and the Greens abstemiously turned their backs on people's reasonable and deeply human longings for abundance, joy, cornucopia, variety and mobility, Abundance, joy, corncupia, variety and mobility? I think that's what most NY'ers like Lemisch enjoy right now, while their taxes go to pay for a CIA and military that denies it to the rest of the world. What, after all, is the matter with food in abundance, and wonderful material goods? Might globalization, under popular control, be a good thing, or is it intrinsically and inevitably bad? Might large-scale agriculture, under different conditions, be a good thing? This is not what Marx argued in v.3 of Capital, but Lemisch's connections to Marxism seems tangential at best. How can it be that in 2000 Nader still believed in the family farm as what he anachronistically called the cultural backbone of America? Why do we hear so much about such archaic notions as self-reliance? Because people feel appalled by the kind of cancer epidemics industrial farming produces? Are TV, Viagra, Prozac and tourism necessarily, as Nader thinks, bad things? What about cars? Even if we were to deal successfully with pollution, I just don't think that Greens would accept, much less delight in, the utopian potential of the easy mobility given to us by cars Don't forget fox-hunting. You haven't lived until you ride across the bog on a foggy morning in your red suit, blowing your horn. ...Do demographic and other data support Green notions of scarcity, or does the Green mystique of scarcity precede investigation of the realities? Are Green ideas of sustainability sometimes rooted in apparent givens that turn out in fact to be political choices? There are only so many blue-finned tuna in the ocean. With fishing boats made from converted sonar-equipped WWII sub hunters, they will rapidly disappear. This has nothing to do with Malthus, but common sense. So it's not clear whether the real limits of what the earth can produce cause the ascetic complex, or whether the ideology comes first, a priori, focusing attention on the limits rather than the possibilities. What ever became of the notion of planning -- figuring out how to accomplish social goals, especially with newer technologies?... Right new technologies. Let's clone blue-fin tuna. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/msg04556.html Sent to PSN on the 8th or so... M.Pugliese Janette Habel's (French Trotskyist) 'Cuba. The Revolution in Peril' (Verso, 1991) http://www.unhcr.ch/refworld/country/writenet/wricub01.htm http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue19/farber19.htm Cuba: The One-Party State Continues Samuel Farber [from New Politics, vol. 5, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 19, Summer 1995] Samuel Farber was born and grew up in Cuba. He is the author of Revolution and Reaction in Cuba 1933-1960 (Wesleyan University Press, 1976) and numerous articles dealing with that country. He teaches political science at Brooklyn College and is a member of the editorial board of Against the Current. IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, some leftists are willing to take a more critical look at the socio-economic and political system that has prevailed in Cuba for more than 35 years. Among them is Carollee Bengelsdorf, a professor of politics at Hampshire College. Unlike many pro-Castro leftists, who substitute Third Worldist clichés for their scant knowledge of Cuban society and history, Bengelsdorf is intimately acquainted with Cuba. She must also be given credit for affirming the need for democracy as a central element of the necessary transformation of the Cuban polity and society. But in spite of its virtues, The Problem of Democracy in Cuba is a deeply flawed book.* Bengelsdorf's narrative often appears to be a history without subjects making choices and taking decisions. This is particularly true of her treatment of Fidel Castro, the most powerful actor in the Cuban drama. Thus, Bengelsdorf advocates a democratization of Cuban society and at least implicitly recognizes that neither Castro nor the Cuban Communist Party shares her inclinations. Yet, she fails to follow through on her analysis and confront the issue of whether the democratization she recommends is compatible with the continuing rule of Fidel Castro and his Communist Party, or whether it will have to be accomplished in opposition to these forces. Moreover, she evades the issue of the continuing one-party state suggesting, with little logic but a good deal of equivocation, that this state in and of itself, does not spell doom for any movement toward democratization, just as the existence of two or more parties in other countries does not guarantee it. Rather, what is critical in this regard is the Party's continuing effort to confiscate the political arena. (p. 171) Bengelsdorf tiptoes around the question of Castro's leading role, or addresses it with euphemisms and circumlocutions. A case in point is her characterization of Castro's regime as paternalism, which she defines as the practice of treating people as children instead of self-reliant adults capable of making decisions. This approach captures an aspect of Castroism but deflects attention from the major role repression has played in almost four decades of rule. While the right-wing incorrectly claims that Castro does not enjoy any popular support and that his regime rules only on the basis of repression, it is disturbing that Bengelsdorf downplays the role of State Security (Seguridad del Estado) and the neighborhood vigilance carried out by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), resulting in systematic violations of civil and political liberties. SIMILARLY, BENGELSDORF ACCEPTS AT FACE VALUE Castro's espousal of the values of national unity as a justification for his suppression of any expression of political opinion potentially threatening his monopoly of power. She also accepts Castro's claim that his approach is based on the views of Cuba's Founding Father, Jose Marti. When Marti -- a Freemason with views deeply rooted in 19th century traditions of progressive liberalism and nationalism -- spoke about unity he was trying to overcome the petty jealousies of the insurgent caudillos in order to bring about a united military campaign against Spanish control of the island. Marti attempted to accomplish this through political means: persuasion, education, and the creation of a united organization to achieve Cuban independence. He did not advocate forceful suppression, imprisonment or the execution of those who resisted his efforts. Furthermore, Marti's views pertaining to unity in the struggle against Spain had no relevance to the different issue of the social, political and constitutional arrangements of the Cuban Republic to be established after victory. For Castro, the word unity has been a euphemism for monolithism and autocratic power. As early as 1954 he wrote to Luis Conte Aguero, then his close friend: Conditions which are indispensable for the integration of a truly civic moment: ideology, discipline and chieftainship. The three are essential but chieftainship is basic...The apparatus of propaganda and organization must be such and so powerful that it will implacably destroy him who will create
Re: Fw: Jesse Lemisch
- Original Message - From: Jesse Lemisch [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 12:50 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L:13969] Jesse Lemisch Thanks for sending this to me. It's amazing in its inability to come to terms with a serious argument. I'm not on the list this was apparently posted on, and don't know whether I care to reply -- but if I did, I'd appreciate knowing how I would do so. Or, it would be nice if somebody posted my article, which is available at www.wpunj.edu/newpol Jesse Jesse, you can respond to my criticisms on a list called Marxism-International which is located at [EMAIL PROTECTED] This is where my criticisms of movement celebrities can found. I have been involved in a two day battle royale with Gayatri Spivak on the question of whether widow burning is phallocentric or not. Come join in the festivities. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)
Yoshie: Cuban socialists aren't opposed to genetic engineering per se, though I don't know if they like eatin' tuna doubt that they are sanguine about trends in corporate genetic engineering. :- Cubans also use nuclear power. In any case, it does not make sense to extrapolate from the economic development model of a besieged island bereft of its main trading partner, except to say that you are always better off eliminating the profit motive--this despite the seething hostility of social democrats like Sam Farber who has written screeds against Cuba for New Politics. Louis Proyect I'm not presenting Cuba as a model, however attractive promising its combination of organic agriculture genetic engineering may be. I'm simply saying that one-dimensional opposition to genetic engineering ( science in general) is counter-productive. Genetic engineering can be a very useful tool in socialist hands, whereas in corporate hands it will be mainly used to further corporate monopoly of intellectual properties. More generally, the transition from capitalism to socialism (when such transition is possible) will not take place according to a blueprint of how to reconcile town countryside: What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges (at http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1875-Gotha/). For instance, from the points of view that focus on impacts on health environment, it would have been correct for socialists not to develop any nuclear power at all, much less nuclear weapons; however, nuclear weapons did probably help to defend socialist states while they lasted, though the burden of military production conscription -- more importantly social control that went with them -- contributed to their eventual downfall, in addition to economic difficulties. The same goes for the breakneck pace of industrialization in the USSR, without which it wouldn't have likely lasted either. With more freedom democracy than existed in the Socialist Bloc, they could have made production ecologically friendlier safer for workers than it was, but not to the extent that would make most environmentalists happy, I suspect. Yoshie
e: US Deception during Bosnian war (previously sent,cut a bunch 'o verbiage...)
Click the URL's esp. for the great aufheben piece etnicizing NATOsevic by Harald Beyer-Arneson, I think. Michael Pugliese funny how one can easily disconnect nationalism from economy. jc helary http://www.ainfos.ca/99/may/ainfos00083.html (en) The BALKAN WAR and leftist apologetics for the Milosovic regime From Harald Beyer-Arnesen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date Tue, 11 May 1999 15:05:43 -0400 http://www.idea.org.uk/cfront/texts/other/kosovo-subjectivities-en.html (Kosov@ Contradictions and Subjectivities (Ethnicizing Social Conflicts - The Example of Yugoslavia - With an Updated Annex). Available online at http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/Internationalismus/jugoslawien/materialie n_06/, updated annex at http://www.humanrights.de/antikrieg/texte/antii_d.htm. http://www.google.com/search?q=Ethnicizing+and+Natosevic+btnG=Google+Search http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/apr99/msg02975.html http://www.webcom.com/wildcat/Yugoslavia.html http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/guest/radical/ESBOSNIA.HTM Bosnia and the poison of nationalism http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/Aut_html/Auf1edit.htm http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html/Aufheben/yugo.html Class Decomposition In The New World Order: Yugoslavia Unravelled (1) Introduction Whilst there have been numerous wars around the globe over the last forty-eight years, Europe has seen only the mundane brutality of everyday capitalist social relations. But once again the spectre of war haunts the proletarians of the continent. The former republics of Yugoslavia have lurched into a bitter cycle of war, and the images of the suffering provide a terrifying reminder of the capacity of the working class to carve itself up along national lines. Are we heading for a major European war? Will the events of the past couple of years in Yugoslavia be repeated throughout Eastern Europe? An analysis of the conflict is clearly imperative. Such an analysis is made more difficult however both by our separation from the events, leading to a lack of information from 'below', and by the endless stream of depressing details on the conflict in the media making any attempt to keep abreast of events into a desensitising test of endurance. So this article will be limited to an attempt to simplify the conflict by grasping the material roots of the nationalist tensions. The first problem lies with deciding where to start. A possible starting point would be the formation of the first (monarchist) Yugoslavia after WW1, as the internal migration of Serbs under the Serb-dominated regime (to be followed by a similar migratory flow after WW2) helped produce the ethnic mish-mash with which we are now familiar. Another possibility is WW2 and the genocide perpetrated by the Ustashe which helps explain the fear of persecution so characteristic of current Serbian nationalist ideology. Neither of these starting points seem to provide the best means of unravelling the conflict however, as the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia did hold together for well over forty years despite its ethnic diversity and the experiences of WW2. Instead, the focus of the analysis has to be the 1974 Constitution, which appears to be a pivotal moment in the shaping of Socialist Yugoslavia; so, to begin with, we have to examine the factors which gave rise to it. (2) Class Recomposition. snip
BLS Daily Report
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS DAILY REPORT, JUNE 25, 2001: Workforce reductions in the high-tech industry have garnered many of the headlines and public attention this year, but layoffs in the old economy sectors have actually been more numerous since 1997, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray Christmas said in an analysis released June 24. Telecommunications, computer, electronics and e-commerce are among the top five job-cutting industries in 2001, according to Challenger, Gray Christmas. The outplacement firm said its study of job cut data shows that high-tech firms reduced 267,907 jobs, accounting for 41 percent of the total cuts nationwide this year. However, while technology-related companies lead in job cuts for 2001, they constitute only one-fifth of the total layoffs announce since 1997. The firm said it analyzed more than 3 million job reductions from 1997 to May 2001, finding that the retail industry was the top job-cutting sector in that time with 285,846 positions eliminated. The automotive, industrial goods, financial and computer businesses round out the top five job-cutting industries over that span (Daily Labor Report, page A-8). The Wall Street Journal feature Tracking the Economy (page A8) indicates that the chain weighted price index for the first quarter, to be released by the Department of Commerce Friday, will be unchanged at a 3.2 percent increase, according to the Consensus Global Forecast. It is getting easier for people age 50 and older to find meaningful jobs, according to one placement agency that focuses on them. But there are big ifs. The biggest one is whether you can shed any anger you still hold against the employer who downsized or otherwise forced you into early retirement, says a man who has devoted the last 9 years to finding work for mature workers. Job prospects are better for people who know Microsoft's Windows operating system. And it is important to have decent skills using the Internet and word-processing spreadsheet, relational-database and presentation software. In another sign of the weakening economy, more debt-laden Americans are losing their homes. In the first quarter, the number of home mortgages in foreclosure increased 9 percent to about 142,000, according to Mortgage Information, a San Francisco-based mortgage research firm that tracks a database of about 29 million loans (USA Today, page 1B). application/ms-tnef
Re: Marxism and ecology
Re; Diamat The Betrayal of Marx:Engels Contra Marx, by Bender, Frederic L. early 70's. Not an Althusserian. The Two Marxism's, by Alvin Gouldner, most definitely no fan of Althusser!
Re: RE: Re: Re: THE HISTORY OF DEFORESTATION
The history of Pacific Lumber Company is illustrative. (I have a book about it sitting around somewhere, but it's not here in my office, so this is of the top of my head.) The first generation to log in the family started in Main, but had overlogged their lands and so picked up and moved to Wisconsin. The second generation overlogged Wisconsin, and so picked up and moved to California, starting Pacific Lumber. The third generation, and I'm sorry I forget the fellow's name, actually learned from his family's past, and logged at such a rate that there was always a good supply of mature trees. In fact, most of the land wasn't even surveyed, and as hard as it may be to believe, apparently nobody at knew the extent of the Headwaters stand of old growth redwoods, just 30 miles from Arcata, the company headquarters. Company employees used to brag that they would never lose their jobs, because there would always be tree to logs. This situation couldn't be tolerated once the company went public, though, and Charles Hurwitz took aim at it. The rest is history, as are the trees. tim --- Forstater, Mathew [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From the establishment of the English colony of Jamestown in 1607, there was uninterrupted and widespread environmental destruction. Within a few generations, the great forests of the Northeast were leveled, and not long after the Civil War logging companies started deforesting the Midwest at such a rapid rate that within 40 years an area the size of Europe had been stripped, including much of Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. For instance, by 1897, sawmills in Michigan had processed 160 billion board feet of white pine leaving less than 6 billion board feet standing in the entire state. mat = Subscribe to ChicoLeft by emailing [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ChicoLeft Subscribe to the Chico Examiner for only $30 annually or $20 for six months. Mail cash or check payabe to Tim Bousquet to POBox 4627, Chico CA 95927 __ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
Re: Re: Re: Current implications for South Africa
At 02:58 PM 6/25/01 -0400, you wrote: At Foundry on April 14, Nader spoke out, rightly, for vaccination, but attacked Viagra and Prozac, apparently seen as only life-style frivolities. From the audience, Joanne Landy (a Nader supporter) cried out -- as is her custom in such situations, particularly in large domed spaces -- Whatsamatta with Viagra!!? and Whatsamatta with Prozac? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: FT on the slump
the FT wrote: The Bank for International Settlements recently published a sobering report noting that falls in private-sector net saving on the scale that the US has experienced - minus 6.5 per cent of gross domestic product in 2000 - have almost always been followed by sharp falls in economic growth two years later. ... Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's prime minister, has announced ambitious plans for economic reform and restructuring. But Japan's partners in the Group of Seven industrialised countries fear that while these reforms may be good for the country's long-term health, they reduce the chance of a short-term recovery. The weakest global link is likely to be Japan. Their intentions are good but their timing is bad, says Edward Yardeni, chief investment strategist at Deutsche Banc Alex Brown in New York. Heizo Takenaka, the economy minister, in effect warned this week that Japan could not be expected to be part of the solution to the world's economic woes for two years. I read a lot of the Bank for International Settlements report on the world economy. It was contradictory. On the one hand, there was a lot of very sober Keynesian talk like that in the first paragraph above. On the other hand, they clearly recommended neoliberal reforms (e.g., those that Koizumi seems to be proposing) that typically make that aggregate demand situation worse, while making the income distribution more unequal. They even mentioned the likelihood that Japanes unemployment would rise during the next few years as the result of the reforms. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Genetic Engineering (was John Zerzan: Future Primitive [was Re:Current implications for South Africa])
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2001/06/mooney-c-06-22.html Libertarians are Right! When It Comes to Promising Technologies Like Genetically Modified Foods, Liberals Need Stranger Bedfellows 6.22.01 - Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2001 5:32 PM Subject: [PEN-L:13915] John Zerzan: Future Primitive (was Re: Current implications for South Africa) Carrol Cox: My understanding of capitalism is that it _must_ grow, regardless of consequences, and that it simply is not worth considering possibilities for constraining growth under capitalism, however desirable or even absolutely necessary that may be. Right now I am reading The Last Ranch by the late Sam Bingham, which deals with the disastrous ecological effects of cattle ranching in Colorado, including desertification. This is the reality that Marxists have to identify to the masses. Saying that MacDonalds fast food is some kind of conquest of the working class because it makes meat cheap and eliminates the need to prepare meals is just the kind of thing that we have no business saying. The fact that so many young people associate Marxism with this kind of vulgar modernization explains why the anti-globalization protesters often call themselves anarchists. While anarchism attracts the young, we are ending up with a movement that revolves around bizarre sects or annual conferences attracting the enlarged prostate brigade. At the last Socialist Scholars Conference, the last I'll ever go to, young people got up during the discussion period of a talk given by Bogdan Denitch on the future of the left and told him that he was completely out of touch. Denitch's social democratic business-as-usual left-Gompers trade unionism is based on the notion that working people in the USA should have a bigger slice of the pie, the rest of the world be damned. As long as Marxism is perceived in this manner, we are in bad shape. As Marxists, our message is not just about more. It is about equity. Most people in the imperialist countries have to understand that the life-style we enjoy is unsustainable. In exchange for a more modest life-style, we will live in world that enjoys peace and respect for the individual. If people in the imperialist countries can not rally to this message, then they (we) deserve the fate that awaits us: war, urban violence, cancer epidemics, drug addiction, alcoholism, FOX TV, and prozac. Louis Proyect If the fundamental problem facing the world is that we are running out of fossil fuels that no alternative energy source will ever be available due to technical impossibility as Mark argues, it appears socialism won't be able to meet even the historically evolved basic needs of all in the world, much less doing more than that. If that's really the case, why not turn to John Zerzan? * AAA P.O. Box 11331 Eugene, OR 97440 On the Transition Postscript to Future Primitve by John Zerzan ...Who doesn't hate modern life? Can what conditioning that remains survive such an explosion of life, one that ruthlessly removes the sources of such conditioning? We are obviously being held hostage by capital and its technology, made to feel dependent, even helpless, by the sheer weight of it all, the massive inertia of centuries of alienated categories, patterns, values. What could be dispensed with immediately? Borders, governments, hierarchyWhat else? How fast could more deep-seated forms of authority and separation be dissolved, such as that of division of labor? I assert, and not, I hope, in the spirit of wishing to derive blueprints from abstract principle, that I can see no ultimate freedom or wholeness without the dissolution of the inherent power of specialists of every kind. Many say that millions would die if the present techno-global fealty to work and the commodity were scrapped. But this overlooks many potentialities. For example, consider the vast numbers of people who would be freed from manipulative, parasitic, destructive pursuits for those of creativity, health, and liberty. At present, in fact, very few contribute in any way to satisfying authentic needs. Transporting food thousands of miles, not an atypical pursuit today, is an instance of pointless activity, as is producing countless tons of herbicide and pesticide poisons. The picture of humanity starving if a transformation were attempted may be brought into perspective by reference to a few other agricultural specifics, of a more positive nature. It is perfectly feasible, generally speaking, that we grow our own food. There are simple approaches, involving no division of labor, to large yields in small spaces. Agriculture itself must be overcome, as domestication, and because it removes more organic matter from the soil than it puts back. Permaculture is a technique that seems to attempt an agriculture that
Re: Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)
Yoshie: I'm not presenting Cuba as a model, however attractive promising its combination of organic agriculture genetic engineering may be. I'm simply saying that one-dimensional opposition to genetic engineering ( science in general) is counter-productive. Genetic engineering can be a very useful tool in socialist hands, whereas in corporate hands it will be mainly used to further corporate monopoly of intellectual properties. We have different assessment about the value of industrial farming techniques. Genetic engineering, along with pesticides, irrigation, chemical fertilizers and all the rest can not be simply appropriated by socialists. The reason they are counter-productive is that they go against the basic principles of soil chemistry, which is a branch of science. This is not about gaia. It is about overcoming the metabolic rift, one of Marx's main preoccupations. More generally, the transition from capitalism to socialism (when such transition is possible) will not take place according to a blueprint of how to reconcile town countryside: What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges (at http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1875-Gotha/). I have no idea what this has to do with my original point. Marx's concerns with soil fertility did not lead to activism. Your quote above has to do with the transition from socialism to communism, not how to make a punchy leaflet. For instance, from the points of view that focus on impacts on health environment, it would have been correct for socialists not to develop any nuclear power at all, much less nuclear weapons; however, nuclear weapons did probably help to defend socialist states while they lasted, though the burden of military production conscription -- more importantly social control that went with them -- contributed to their eventual downfall, in addition to economic difficulties. I am mortified to hear this. As anybody knows, a principled Marxist position would have been for the USSR to use bow and arrows. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa
Mark Jones wrote: Yoshie Furuhashi Mark should stop putting the question as an oft-thwarted attempt at a prediction -- e.g., will energy be available at current requirement projections at environmental costs most people can stand and at market prices compatible with those particular requirements within a capitalist context? Yoshie, please don't put words in my mouth. I haven't said this or anything like this. Mea culpa, Mark. Er, so what have you been saying? Cheers, Rob.
Gary Null
The Pacifica board, which has been hijacked by a bunch of corporate sharks, has two main bases of support. In NYC's WBAI, it consists of porkchop nationalists who take their cue from station manager Utrice Leid while at Los Angeles's KPFK it consists of Nation magazine liberals. Two smaller stations in Houston and Washington, DC also line up with the board but have generally kept a low profile in the battle, except for Houston's station manager Garland Ganter who had a protester arrested for leafleting in front of a fundraiser. In a gesture reminiscent of East Asia cronyism, Ganter hired his wife and the two reputedly make $80,000 each. The only station that has eluded the board's grasp is KPFA in Berkeley, which mobilized 10,000 people in the streets after Ganter seized control of the station on the behest of national program director Bessie Wash. The hijackers, which were forced to back down in Berkeley, are now on the defensive after 6 months of militant and massive protests. Some of the hijackers have resigned, while one board member named Ken Ford is threatening to turn over protest letters to the FBI. Such is the state of a progressive board that has the full backing of people like Marc Cooper. One of the few on-air but non-paid hosts in NYC who has gone along with the Leid gang is new age health food and vitamin guru Garry Null (http://www.garynull.com/), who has launched an investigation into the crisis on his noonday show Natural Living. The show is usually devoted to Null telling listeners how vitamin C can cure AIDS or cancer, or how the medical establishment is out to get him. Null also appeared for hours at a time during the local PBS TV's fundraising marathon last year. If you became a subscriber to the station, you'd receive a copy of one of Null's ridiculous books. He is a tall, handsome fellow about my age but there is something a bit off about him, most especially his head full of coal black hair that shrieks dye as much as Ronald Reagan's head used to. Null must be a bit self-conscious about his dye job, since he kept pointing it out to his fund-raising co-host. See, Sally, that's what a good diet of soybeans and cabbage will do. It will keep you young. Not only is my eyesight 20-20 but I don't have a single gray hair. Right. He painted them all. On today's show, he interviewed Bernard White, the fired popular African-American host of the morning show that he shared with Amy Goodman. She is still at the station but under extreme duress. White, Goodman and Juan Gonzalez form the central leadership of the struggle to regain Pacifica. To Null's credit, he gave White a full hour to air his criticisms. None of this sunk in on Null at all who despite his new age unctuousness can explode with frightening rancor. It appears that Null has it in for the opposition because some of them, including Goodman apparently, thought his new age bullshit was an embarrassment to the station, even if it raised something like 25 percent of the funds. Listening to Null trying to persuade White of the merits of the board's new directions was a genuine culture clash, with Bernard, an overweight, mellow-voiced, laid-back fellow trying to parry the thrusts of the febrile new age hustler who thought that Pacifica had to be tolerant of board members who were in business. As an example of the direction that the station should be moving in, according to Null, was the development of an endowment like the local PBS station had. Null, his voice raising, said, Don't you see. Channel 13 has an endowment of 150 million dollars and only 5 percent comes from listener contributions. When White pointed out to him that the other 95 percent came from sources like Archer-Daniels-Midland, Mobil and Mercedes-Benz, Null grew excited and changed the subject. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
RE: Kuznets cycles and energy-system renewal
I have a very short encyclopedia entry on the Kuznets U hypothesis, but it is part of slightly a longer essay, if anyone is interested. I argue that Kuznets himself warned against applying what were some hunches about the early development of presently industrialized countries to currently 'developing' economies. Neverthless, in the 70s people like Paukert and Ahluwalia did just that, and even used cross-sectional data to test what was a theory about secular development. So they pieced together countries at different levels of GNP across a U shaped curve, implying that they were going to move along it. The problem here is that the conclusion that may be drawn is that countries with lousy income distribution should not worry, just keep on pursuing growth and they will become more equal. More recent evidence tells us this is not a very likely prospect, plus there is the problem with the environmental impact, since they are just talking about good old GNP/GDP grwoth, with all the problems with that. Cutler Cleveland has been doing interesting work for a long time on biophysical limits. At one time he supported the energy theory of value, which has some problems I think, although people like Herman Daly rejected it on the grounds that it was too similar to a labor theory of value, but I don't buy their non-critique of that. Be that as it may, the Daly-Costanza ecological economics stuff has its good points, but it also has some weaknesses that can be improved by blending it with political economy, social ecology, feminist economics, etc. I have some papers where I derive what I call some biophysical conditions for a sustainable economy--similar to some of what you can find in the ecological economics and sustainability lit under the names of things like 'rules for sustainability' etc. If we take this stuff seriously, it would entail a very major transformation of the way we live, the technological structure of production (transformation from an exhaustible resource-based to a renewable resource-based technological structure of production, etc.), whole sectors, industries, firms, occupations, skills, etc, would become obsolete, news ones required. There would have to a major sort of transition period, rethinking the whole layout in terms of the way we live and so on. There would definitely have to be either a guaranteed income and or guaranteed jobs for all (and there will be plenty to do) to make sure that the disruptions would not result in more massive unemployment, poverty, etc. I don't think it is impossible, but it would require a fantastic change in consciousness etc. Adolph Lowe, who taught at the New School for many years and who was thinking about these issues from the sixties on, thought that it was possible that it would take a mini-catastrophe or even a few mini-catastrophes to get the message through to people on a mass scale that we absolutely must change in fundamental ways. He hoped that it would take a major catastrophe, and he hoped that maybe it wouldn't take any catastrophes at all, but the way things have developed, with the inequalities and the technological developments, some people are able to insulate themselves from the effects of environmental and other problems, so we might be looking more to something like the old movie Metropolis than bioregionalist communism or communist bioregionalism. I can't see how will get there absent significant economic and social planning, with all the challenges that brings. We are not on the path to evolve in that direction presently, it doesn't seem, not automatically. Mat
Fwd: NULL'S REPORT REBROADCAST
GARY NULL REBROADCAST RIGHT NOW ON WBIX.ORG ...folks, right now--8:11 p.m.--on www.wbix.org, Errol is broadcasting Gary Null's *investigation* from earlier today on the situation at WBAI. After that conversation, Denis Moynihan from the Pacifica Campaign and Bernard White appeared on WBIX to discuss Gary's report. After Null's rebroadcast, WBIX will also run Moynihan White. Tune in for some good radio! --efs http://savewbai.tao.ca To unsubscribe from this list email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with: unsubscribe savewbai or visit http://lists.tao.ca Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Marxism and ecology
At 25/06/01 14:02 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: No kidding. Geez, I did not know that. Recent reading has convinced me that it is time to reconsider dialectical materialism, the unjustly maligned attempt by Marx and Engels to provide a unified analysis of society and nature. That is not what dialectical materialism is. an updated version can provide insights into the environmental crisis that historical materialism simply can not. Always assuming the update is accurate and not an adaption of something else. (By the way, there's an essay by this guy named Michael Perelman titled Marx and Resource Scarcity in there as well. It's pretty gosh-darned good.) Vaillancourt singles out Engels's Anti-Duhring and the Dialectics of Nature for special consideration since they are more directly concerned with nature and ecology than any of the previous writings of Marx and Engels. They are also considered bulwarks of dialectical materialist thought. The Dialectics of Nature contains the famous chapter The Role of Work in Transforming Ape into Man. I cannot comment on the work by Vaillancourt but Louis Proyect dwells on this particular article by Engels to imply that the Dialectics of Nature is an ecological work. It is not. It is the last of a collection of articles with titles about Motion, Heat, and Electricity. It is followed by other notes and fragments covering themes like Mathematics, Mechanics and Astronomy, Physics and Chemistry. The last fragment, Biology, might be most likely to portray an ecological perspective if that was a general theme of this work, but it does not. The article known as The Part Played by Labour in the Transition form Ape to Man is an extremely creative work which is rightly quoted to show the compatability of marxism with ecological concerns but it would be quite wrong to go away with an unquestioned assumption that the Dialectics of Nature is about ecology. The particular article was originally written as an introduction to a more extensive work entitled The Three Basic Forms of Slavery but this was not completed. After one of the most famous passages Louis Proyect goes on to quote the next passage: And, in fact, with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more this progresses the more will humanity not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, and the more impossible will become the senseless and unnatural idea of a contrast between mind and matter, humanity and nature, soul and body, such as arose after the decline of classical antiquity in Europe and obtained its highest elaboration in Christianity. If Louis Proyect had continued still further, he would have read: But if it has already required the labour of thousands of years for us to learn to some extent how to evaluate the more remote *natural* effects of our actions directed towards production, this has been even more difficult in regard to the more remote *social* effects. ... The men who in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries laboured to create the steam engine had no idea that they were preparing the instrument which more than any other was to revolutionize social conditions throughout the world. Especially in Euorpe where it helped to concentrate wealth in the hands of a minority and to make the huge majority propertyless, this instrument was destined, first to give social and political domination to the bourgeoisie, but then to give rise to a class struggle between bourgeoise and proletariat which can end only in the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the abolition of all class antagonisms. Louis Proyect does not understand that the previous chords were to prepare for this key change. Instead he dwells on Engels' formulation about our oneness with nature. [Apologies Michael, if this is a characterisation. Apologies to Lou if this is a *false* characterisation, but how can one argue against a serious misreading of an important text if one cannot say how one thinks it has been seriously misinterpreted?] When Engels states we will know our oneness with nature, he is really hearkening back to the classical materialist roots of Marxism. After all, Marx wrote his PhD thesis on the philosophy of nature in Democritus and Epicurus. These philosophers are in the materialist tradition begun by Parmenides and Heraclitus, who lived a century before. This tradition is continued in the philosophy of Hippocrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, who are the forerunners of the science of nature and even of scientific ecology itself. The
Re: RE: Kuznets cycles and energy-system renewal
At 07:10 PM 06/25/2001 -0500, you wrote: . I argue that Kuznets himself warned against applying what were some hunches about the early development of presently industrialized countries to currently 'developing' economies. without those warnings, the Kuznets hypothesis (that rising inequality is eventually solved by economic growth) is nothing but the trickle-down theory. I've wondered about the view that workers have to make a sacrifice to promote or save capitalism, whether it's trying to take off and become developed or it's in crisis. But in the orthodox theory, isn't interest the reward for saving, i.e., for abstinence? so shouldn't the working class be paid interest for making sacrifices? even better, shouldn't it be given equity? Some might argue that these sacrifices sometimes only involve relative deprivation, not absolute deprivation. But both the take-off and economic crises create new needs, which undermine the utility-value of real wages. So what looks like merely relative sacrifice could be absolute. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Fw: Jesse Lemisch
I do not think that something like this should be sent to the list. Michael Pugliese wrote: I'm sure you've seen Lou intervene at the NY Marxist School or the Brecht Forum! Michael Pugliese -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Current implications for South
From: Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] The problem of debt, which you raise about Zim, is simply a red-herring. In context, debt, though not trivial, is symptomatic rather than causal. Your hopes about renewables are equally illusory. You're jumping around, comrade. But I agree with these two points. But not this: Are you now supporting the MDC? Well, yes, you obviously are. No, same line: left civil-society critique. Is that not actually supporting a neoliberal solution in Zim? What do you think, realistically, will happen when and if MDC come to power? More neoliberalism. (I think I made that clear in the article.) Finally, the global problem capitalism faces is not over-accumulation, but a capital shortage, desperate and bordering on famine. Ok, this one I will look forward to with interest, comarde.
RE: Re: Current implications for South Africa
Yoshie Furuhashi Mark should stop putting the question as an oft-thwarted attempt at a prediction -- e.g., will energy be available at current requirement projections at environmental costs most people can stand and at market prices compatible with those particular requirements within a capitalist context? Yoshie, please don't put words in my mouth. I haven't said this or anything like this. Mark Jones
RE: response to Mark Jones Post
Ken Hanly: This is a response to a recent post (included) by Mark that I sent to my son, an economist with the Saskatchewan government. Ken, it's nice to have informed discussion and it would be good if your son could participate. The post you sent him is light on data so no wonder your son had a problem with it. I'd be happy to get into the nitty-gritty. I take issue with some of his remarks about electricity supply. As for natural gas, his optimism about world supply is unfounded, the world is not as full of available gas as that, and the problem with gas is the staggering rates of decline you get where a play starts to deplete. As for externalities, I have in mind primarily anthropocentric climate-change. How do you quantify the now-proven changes to the North Atlantic thermohaline for instance? This threatens the entire balance of the world climate system. best wishes, and I'd be glad to discuss this more. Mark
Kuznets cycles and energy-system renewal
Energy-supply systems tend to be highly centralised, large-scale and capital intensive. Therefore they tend to be the subject of waves of investment, consolidation, and eventual transformation as new technologies accumulate. Since the periods of renewal and transformation require massive new investment and therefore a transfer of resources from current consumption, they are often stressful in social-stability terms and may partly coincide with generalised recessions. However, in the past, capitalism has successfully negotiated such transitions and renewals. In 1955, Simon Kuznets (creator of national accounts and the concept of Gross National Product) published his inverted U theory of capitalist evolution: that income inequality rises in the early stages of development, and falls as economies mature. (see LBO #80 (November 1997)which may still be on Doug Henwood's website). One conventional approach, based on Kuznets-type cycles, to understanding current energy-supply concerns is to take account of investment cycles and try to see how these interact with wider conjunctural phenomena, such as the general business cycle, geopolitical considerations and so on. In this view, there is no absolute lack of energy, but shortages may arise in market-driven supply because of lack of infrastructure renewal, the result of a period of low prices. There will be no apocalyptic melt-down, just short-term supply difficulties and price spikes until raised profits lead to new investment and more abundant supply. This argument is well put in the following article, from the Kansas City Business Journal, 22 June 2001. This argument is important because it tells us something about what is likely to happen in the next few years, so we can learn from it. But it is an argument from past experience, and that is not an accurate guide, especially when entirely unprecedented things may be happening to capitalism's all-important energy-base. This argument that energy will always be available but is subject to cyclical change in availability, leaves aside the question of whether or not there is any ultimate resource constraint. The thinking is that enough investment will always find new exploitable reserves and that given time the energy markets, like all other commodity markets, will be self-correcting. This is certainly wrong. There is too much hard evidence now of the existence of severe constraints on future supply caused by reserve-depletion and the failure to add new reserves/resources to the world's energy portfolio. It is clear that conventional hydrocarbon reserves are strictly finite. Unconventional reserves do also exist (Alberta tar sands, stranded gas, deepwater gas etc) but they do not come cheap and may be irrecoverable for enviornmental and other reasons. So the underlying assumption in the Kuznets-type argument is too optimistic; nevertheless, Carlson in the article below is right about one thing. It is clear that we are entering a new period of sustained and much higher energy prices coupled with very high levels of investment in new sources of supply, particularly in oil and gas, and in the construction of new electricity generation capacity. This new investment-wave, coupled with the effects of economic recession and new forms of energy conservation (very easy in energy-guzzling nations like the USA), which together help reduce demand for energy, ought in normal circumstances to push the underlying problem away to another day. But these, as I hope to show, are not normal circumstances. Assuming conventional reserves, primarily of hydrocarbons, are strictly finite, the next question (moving beyond Kuznets-type cycles of infrastructure renewal), is whether the world economy can make the transition to an entirely new energy-base in the future. Presumably this would be some kind of hydrogen-based economy with much more conservation, use of renewables (especially wind power), new kinds of nuclear such as pebble-bed reactors, and more exotic things like fusion reactors, fast breeders, and so on. This is serious stuff. If conventional reserves are as finite as some think (me included), then if we don't transition to some entirely new energy-base, we shall have to transtion back to chopping wood and using steam engines to get coal. So some kind of transition is inevitable. The question becomes, how messy will it be? How much of humankind will be left even further behind, and will the resulting global inequality, which would be far more severe even than today, be manageable at all? The transition from coal and steam to oil and electricity took all of the first half of the last century, and produced two world wars and a legacy of absolute immiseration for two-thirds of humankind. Yet it should have been easy: oil was plentiful, easily obtainable and far superior to coal. Also, the global environment was far less stressed than it now is, and we were still in Herman Daly's 'half-full world'. None of these advantage now
