Re: Capitalism as an accident and freak of nature

[Chris Burford]

At 26/06/01 16:03 -0400, Charles Brown wrote:

> >CB: So, will socialism be an accident and freak of nature ?  What was the
> >natural course of history , had the freak accident not occurred causing
> >capitalism ?
>
>
>Yes there is something freakish about it. It is a successful social system
>at a particular stage of the technical development of the means of
>production, which is highly social but *appears" to be the work of
>individual owners.
>
>
>
>Charles B: Well, if you want to say it is contradictory, I agree. But 
>contradiction is not freakish. On the contrary, contradiction is 
>universal. Everything is a contradiction. As you say below ( after 
>interesting musings)
>
>"But is the smoothest course of history the most 'natural' one? Perhaps the
>struggle of contradictions is inseparable from change and development."

I was really giving an initial reaction to the theme, but it was a bit more 
than musings. As the intensity of class struggle recedes as the main 
mechanism for overthrowing capitalism, it is worth looking at what 
capitalism is, and considering major issues like the effects on the 
environment and the quality of human life.

Its historical emergence is in a sense a freak, and it has to do with the 
particularity of contradiction. IMO the long debate about the origins of 
capitalism showed that there are indeed particular features to the early 
emergence of capitalism which are particular but do not detract from the 
history of oppression and exploitation with which it is associated (like 
other societies).

As we look back there are some strangely unique features about how it 
emerged in a particular place at a particular time. This is rather like the 
strange perspective in cosmology that realises that if certain variables 
did not have the exact value we believe them to have, we would not be 
sitting here now.

This is the anthropic perspective and is an artefact of looking backwards 
through a unique history from a vantage point that has produced us as 
observers. But it does not deny that there were other possibilities. Indeed 
to make sense of the riddle we have to realise that there must have been.

Writings which some consider classical in the marxist tradition, do not 
explicit take on board probabilism in the interpretation of historical 
materialism. But it can be incorporated quite easily without doing violence 
to the broad outlines of historical materialism. It just undermines any 
idealist representation of HM as a simple onward march. But it gives us 
plenty of cause for hope.

Moche Machover was the first to apply to a probabilistic approach to 
marxian economics.

Philosophically the particularity of contradiction is the crucial thing 
here. Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular 
contradiction. This particular contradiction constitutes the particular 
essence which distinguishes one thing from another.

To say capitalism is a sort of freak is merely to say that it is a highly 
particular form of contradiction that was similar to others in some 
respects but in its particularity it was unique. Once emerged, it affected 
all other possible developments in contact with it.

I was also resonating to the image of it as a freak, a monster, a cancer. 
It is very like a cancer as a variant of human social behaviour which 
expands with great aggression in its surrounding environment, but has its 
own seeds of decay within it.  Emotionally of course the universe does not 
care if capitalism is a freak or a monster. In the short term for us it is 
like a monster. In the longer term it is a paper monster which should be 
regarded with a degree of disdain.

Chris Burford

London

Re: Re: Re: PNG

[Rob Schaap]

G'day Ian,

> Not a peep on the usual web news [AP, Reuters], what's up over there
> Rob?


See below.  The Oz Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has just told
partliament the bodycount has been revised to six.  As soon as the
anti-privatisation demos were reclassified as a 'law and order' issue, the
automatic rifles came out.  I believe a funeral protest is planned for this
arvo, but have heard no more as yet.

News updates from these parts is best got at: http://www.abc.net.au/
As is this:
  Curfew imposed in
  Port Moresby 

  The Papua New Guinean
  Government has imposed an
  overnight curfew in the capital, Port
  Moresby.

  The move is an attempt to avoid a
  repeat of this week's violent clashes
  between police and student
  demonstrators.

  The PNG Cabinet has endorsed Prime Minister Mekere Morauta's
  decision to impose a curfew in Port Moresby from
tonight until July 10.

  The Prime Minister says the curfew, which
  will be in force from 7:00pm until 5:00am
  local time, is essential to assist police in
  controlling the situation in the town.

  The acting police commissioner will be in
  control of implementing and enforcing the
  curfew. 

  The Government's decision to leave police
  in charge of the curfew is a vote of
  confidence in a force that has been widely
  criticised for the forceful way that it broke
  up a peaceful student protest on Monday  
  night.

  The police force has also been criticised
  over its handling of ensuing clashes with
  protesters, in which at least three students
  were shot dead.

  Meanwhile, Papua New Guinea police have
  also moved to contain a large crowd that
  has gathered outside the defence force 
  headquarters.

  Riot police have been called in as 
  reinforcements, although there has
  been no violence so far.

  And students at the University of Papua New 
  Guinea have declared their intention to march
  to Parliament, carrying the bodies of the 
  three students killed in yesterday's clashes.

  It is unclear if police will allow that march
  to proceed.

  There have been no reports of trouble around 
  the town so far, but the Murray Barracks 
  gathering and the planned student march are
  potential flashpoints.

  Police and the Government are appealing for 
  calm.


  Warning

  Australia has warned of the danger of more
disturbances in Port Moresby.

  The travel advice issued by the Foreign Affairs
Department in Canberra says Australians should not move around the Papua New
Guinea capital. 

  Foreign Affairs says the situation in Port Moresby
has deteriorated, with reports of looting and burning of buildings and motor
vehicles. 

  The travel notice says large groups of people are
roaming Port Moresby and there could be more trouble. 

  The Australian warning says traffic between Port
Moresby and the airport has sometimes been disrupted because of
demonstrations. 


http://www.theage.com.au/breaking/

Port Moresby calmer after rioting

  Source: AAP|Published: Wednesday June 27, 11:04 AM

  PORT MORESBY - The Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby was tense but quiet
early today after riots yesterday which left three dead and 17 injured. 

  Police reinforcements were today sent to the scenes of yesterday's worst
violence, during which police opened fire to quell riots and looting sparked
by student protests against privatisation. 

  Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta last night appealed for calm so that
police could restore order to the city. 

  The trouble began after police used tear gas and automatic weapons to try to
disperse students who had been protesting for five days against economic
reforms in PNG. 

  In the resulting mayhem, three students wer

Re: Re: economic news

[Rob Schaap]

G'day Gene,

> I don't think that if the consumers bubble (or bumble) along, spending
> on
> houses and autos, that it will boost business fixed investment.  The
> capacity
> utilization rate -- even while consumers persist in spending -- is
> going down,
> not up.
> 
> And my own view is that consumers will cut back, rather than
> persist in
> spending.  The deals being offered on new car purchases seem to be
> getting to
> the desperate level.  Zero percent interest rates, big cash givebacks,
> etc.

I agree.  Sorta helps make sense of the positions of comrades Kliman, Freeman
and Perelman, too, eh?  There's plenty of cheap credit about, up to not very
long ago, wages looked reliably on the rise, and yet capacity utilisation has
been going down.  Now, part of this may have to do with falling effective
demand overseas, but, given, most of the market for most of this stuff is
domestic, you'd have to think something other than, and logically prior to,
underconsumption is going on here.  Has competition sent many cutting edge
manufacturers to the point where they can't sell at a profit, I wonder? 
Telecommunications is a classic, of course, what with nearly everything being
down to big fixed costs, and very little down to the actual routing of a
digicall - but maybe largely automated toolmakers and car manufacturers are
approaching the same point.  If so, the old trick of merging oneself out of
competition ain't as easy as it used to be.  New (if partly idle) plant,
debt-financed buy-back bonanzas, and old mergers have put the parties in debt;
shareholders are no longer rewarding CEOs for contemplating mergers; and there
must be large chunks of the finance sector already sufficiently exposed to
dodgy propositions (eg junk bonds) to shy away from chucking more money at
such shenanigans.  Nope, perhaps some genuine in-your-face capital destruction
is called for.

Waddyareckon?

Cheers,
Rob.

Re: Re: PNG

[Ian Murray]

- Original Message -
From: "Rob Schaap" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 7:45 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:14060] Re: PNG


> > three anti-privateering demo students had been shot and killed
>
> Make that six ...
=
Not a peep on the usual web news [AP, Reuters], what's up over there
Rob?

Ian

Re: PNG

[Rob Schaap]

> three anti-privateering demo students had been shot and killed 

Make that six ...

Re: economic news

[Eugene Coyle]

Jim Devine wrote  in part:

>
>
> The second scenario involves more severe rises in unemployment and then
> sudden declines in spending on housing and other consumer durable,
> _despite_ the Fed's rate cuts. The first scenario suggests that the
> continued purchases of houses and autos and the like will spread to sector
> I, raising profitability there and boosting business fixed investment,
> which would discourage further increases in the unemployment rate.
>
>

I don't think that if the consumers bubble (or bumble) along, spending on
houses and autos, that it will boost business fixed investment.  The capacity
utilization rate -- even while consumers persist in spending -- is going down,
not up.

And my own view is that consumers will cut back, rather than persist in
spending.  The deals being offered on new car purchases seem to be getting to
the desperate level.  Zero percent interest rates, big cash givebacks, etc.

Gene Coyle

Re: The 'R' word

[Ian Murray]

> ``Either we are in a recession or this is the worst non-recession
ever,''
> said Anirvan Banerji, director of research at the Economic Cycle
Research
> Institute (ECRI). ``It's not different this time. It is following
the
> classic pattern with minor variations.''
>
> http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/010626/business_economy_recession_dc.html?
> Tom Walker
> Bowen Island, BC
> 604 947 2213
=
"Similitude is produced and must be learned"  [Umberto Eco "A Theory
of Semiotics"]

The 'R' word

[Tom Walker]

``Either we are in a recession or this is the worst non-recession ever,''
said Anirvan Banerji, director of research at the Economic Cycle Research
Institute (ECRI). ``It's not different this time. It is following the
classic pattern with minor variations.''

http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/010626/business_economy_recession_dc.html?
Tom Walker
Bowen Island, BC
604 947 2213

economic news

[Jim Devine]

from REUTERS: >U.S. consumer confidence rose this month while durable goods 
orders and new home sales increased in May, according to reports released 
on Tuesday that lowered expectations for an aggressive interest rate cut. 
The rosy data came just before Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and 
the rest of the U.S. central bank's policymaking committee meet to ponder 
interest rates. The Fed has cut rates five times this year by a hefty 
half-percentage point each time to boost the shaky economy.<

some random thoughts:

It seems that there are two parts of the U.S. private economy that are out 
of sync with each other. On the one hand, according to the NBER folks, we 
may have already started a recession, centered in manufacturing, as seen in 
the decline in business fixed investment. The Fed's rate cuts haven't taken 
hold there yet. But consumer spending -- especially on durables (including 
new housing) -- is doing fine, probably due to the rate cuts.

These two sectors affect each other and limit each other. I doubt that they 
can be out of sync this way for long. But is the consumer sector (Marx's 
sector II) going to pull up the rest of manufacturing (roughly, sector I) 
or is the latter going to drag down the consumers?

The second scenario involves more severe rises in unemployment and then 
sudden declines in spending on housing and other consumer durable, 
_despite_ the Fed's rate cuts. The first scenario suggests that the 
continued purchases of houses and autos and the like will spread to sector 
I, raising profitability there and boosting business fixed investment, 
which would discourage further increases in the unemployment rate.

A key variable here is consumer debt, which as a recent issue of LEFT 
BUSINESS OBSERVER suggests, is at an all-time high relative to income. How 
much more debt are consumers willing to take on, so that the first, happy, 
scenario happens? This in turn depends on the value of assets. The Fed's 
policy has involved a pumping up of asset prices, both of equities and of 
housing. As long as stocks don't fall much more and housing stays so high 
(except in San Francisco and its environs, it seems), consumers who own 
assets can continue to spend, not being shocked by the bear market and 
other bad news. Those who have the luxury of being able to plan ahead are 
also the big future beneficiaries of the tax cut plan, so they can look to 
the future and spend a lot now (as suggested by the permanent income 
hypothesis). The rest of us will get a small check this year which may 
allow us to avoid major cuts in spending.

What's going to happen in asset markets? My impression is that the 
price/earnings ratio is still very high by historical standards,  so that 
the stock market has quite a ways to go -- down. Of course, a lot of this 
has to do with low earnings, so optimists might say that profits will 
return next year, so that the price/earnings ratio isn't _that_ high. But 
even back when profits were very high, the price/earnings ratio was much 
too high by historical standards. So I think there's a good chance that if 
low interest rates spur the stock market, it will be another bubble, like 
that of the late 1990s.

I really don't know much about the housing market, but that sure seems to 
be a bubble, too. My impression -- and I'm sure that Doug will correct me 
if I'm wrong -- is that the percentage of house prices that's actually 
owned by the "home owners" has been falling (partly as a result of 
Clinton-era programs). House prices seem to be at a peak.

If housing prices fall sharply, and stock prices continue to fall, we may 
be in big trouble. The boom has been powered by increases in debt, and Fed 
policies encourage that to continue, so if asset prices fall, there may 
likely be waves of bankruptcy as consumer net worth collapses. (The 
bankruptcy rate is up, but I don't know if that's a trend.) We might even 
see a Japanese-style "popped Bubble Economy" result. Spending may become 
totally unresponsive to interest-rate cuts (so that it's not just sector I 
spending like nowadays), while lending may not expand (being rationed 
instead) as banks find themselves saddled with many more "non-performing 
loans" and seeing all borrowers as being risky, especially those most 
willing to borrow. Interest rates might fall toward zero.

Currently, the Fed has been pumping up the irrational exuberance, in both 
housing and equities, so we don't know where it's going to end. The 
extremely large current-account deficit looms over the economy. I still 
wonder when the rate cuts will cause the dollar to fall, broadcasting 
further stagnation to the rest of the world outside the U.S. while 
encouraging inflation here. My crystal ball is getting foggier...

any comments?

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

Re: off pen-l

[Ian Murray]

> I am not receiving any e-mail today.  I don't know the problem.  I
hope
> that you have been behaving.
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929


We haven't and what's behavior anyway? :-)

Ian

Steel query

[Seth Sandronsky]

PEN-L,

Hi.  Can anybody direct me to cites and sources concerning the nominal 
and/or real wages of South Korean steelworkers versus U.S. steelworkers, and 
the most recent global rankings for steel exports to the U.S.?

With advance thanks,
Seth Sandronsky
_
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

off pen-l

[Michael Perelman]

I am not receiving any e-mail today.  I don't know the problem.  I hope
that you have been behaving.
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

PNG

[Rob Schaap]

G'day all,

Maybe I've missed it, but it seems to me that if three anti-privateering demo
students had been shot and killed (and a couple of others put in critical
condition) in Gothenberg last week, the news would have been huge.  I mean, we
even know the name of the one lad who was badly wounded.  Has *any* organ in
America reported these killings at a Papua'New Guinea demo yesterday?  Mebbe
if more are shot during the funeral march today, eh?

Oh, and I see good consumer sentiment news has stopped meaning much to the
Dow.  Even the expectation of a rate cut couldn't lift 'em over the opening
line yesterday.  If there is a cut, I suppose we can expect a couple of
percentage points' improvement for a week or so, but it seems to me that the
morale-sustaining value of the equity markets is wearing off, too, and global
'fundamentals' are getting talked about more all the time.   I think they
spell 'recession' with a capital 'D', myself.  Especially if all the bad
feeling these WTO decisions are engendering across the Atlantic, (not to
mention all the bad feeling Dubya is engendering everywhere) appear bound to
retard the march of 'globalisation' ...

Cheers,
Rob.

Re: Re: Re: Marxism and ecology

[Tim Bousquet]

http://halltravel.com/general/13.shtml

--- Ann Li <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> He still is? I recall coming across something about
> that in the 80s.
> 
> BTW, I just got back from a conference where
> displaced media workers from
> silicon gulch and silicon valley refer to themselves
> as "dot-communists".
> 
> Ann
> 
> - Original Message -
> From: "Michael Pugliese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 8:20 AM
> Subject: [PEN-L:14019] Re: Marxism and ecology
> 
> 
> >Lee Baxandall, who edited a collection on
> marxism and aesthetics in the
> > 70's, now edits a nudist magazine.
> > Michael Pugliese
> >
> > - Original Message -
> > From: "Keaney Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 1:07 AM
> > Subject: [PEN-L:14001] Marxism and ecology
> >
> >
> > > Chris Burford wrote:
> > >
> > > Marxism is neither sentimental humanism nor
> sentimental naturism.
> > >
> > > =
> > >
> > > I had a hunch those Nudists for Nader were
> suspect.
> > >
> > > Michael K.
> > >
> >
> >
> 


=
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

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)

[Doug Henwood]

Jim Devine wrote:

>BTW, I find it interesting that Louis is emulating Brad's style of 
>meaningless response.

Though patronizing offers of reading lists are an innovation, don't you think?

Doug

Re: Re: Re: Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)

[Jim Devine]

At 06:53 PM 06/26/2001 -0400, you wrote:
> >Even from a long range perspective, eliminating the difference between
> >city and country means industrializing (citifying) the country as well
> >as 'ruralizing' the city.
> >
> >Carrol
>
>Wrong.

this type of one-word dogmatic-seeming comment is a waste of band-width, 
exactly the kind of thing that pen-l should avoid. It doesn't in any way, 
shape, or form show why Carrol's view is "wrong" (if indeed it is). We have 
to have some kind of standards.

BTW, I find it interesting that Louis is emulating Brad's style of 
meaningless response.

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

Re: Re: Puzzle of the day

[Tim Bousquet]

Michael is probably most aware of the situation at the
local Chico hospital, where the nurses have unified
after about a decade-long fight. First vote, about
four years ago, came up negative, and the most recent
vote for unionization passed. In both organizing
efforts, organizers were targeted (still are) by
management with harassment, suddenly changed hours,
and the like. Loads of scabs have been sent in. Now,
that the union was voted in, management is fighting
tooth and nail against any real negotiation. My bet is
that the NLRB will be called in.

Still, despite all the above, I continue to run into
nurses like the one I met at a dinner party the other
night, who think of the unionization move as an
"attack on the hospital," and as "causing trouble."
Maybe the profession attracts people who are overly
empathic to their employers (?).

This hospital, incidentally, has a local monopoly.
Last year they bought the only hospital in an
adjoining county, some forty miles away, and
immediately closed the emergency room. They then
started offering "emergency flight insurance" for
residents of that county, where they would pay $40 a
month which would insure them against the cost of
riding in a helicopter ambulance to the emergency room
here in Chico.

That's the state of that industry, I suppose.

tim

--- Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >- Original Message -
> >From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >
> >
> >>Curious what you are noting here?
> >>
> >>Nathan Newman
> >
> >-I think Michael is referring to the problems of
> under-staffing &
> >-mandatory overtime:
> >
> >But the need for mandatory overtime to deal with
> under-staffing is exactly
> >what is giving nursing unions strength.  Because
> nursing is a credentialled
> >profession and unions cannot force new hires that
> don't exist (unlike say in
> >autowork), mandatory overtime is an inevitable
> result.
> >
> >That is the short-term issue- the question is the
> long-term trend and that
> >is looking better for nurses, although hospitals
> are trying to divide the
> >workforce, split work off to lower-paid job
> descriptions, etc.  But the
> >nursing unions are getting much more radical- with
> independent unions like
> >the Cal Nurses Association working with the MA and
> PA nursing associations
> >on a new national union, while even the stodgy
> American Nurses Association
> >is affiliating with the AFL-CIO after years of
> avoiding being seen as too
> >much of  a union (interesting politics in that
> division, as well as with
> >SEIU).
> >
> >-- Nathan Newman
> 
> I agree with you about the long-term trend, but it
> appears that 
> potential hires do exist now, since hospitals come
> up with scabs in 
> response to striking nurses:
> 
> *   To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 02:11:14 -0400
> Subject: Nurse Strikers Surround Scabs (Brockton,
> Mass)
> 
> Nurse Strikers Surround Scabs
> 
> 1. Striking nurses surround vans of out-of-state
> replacements
> 2. What the Community Can Do To Support the Brockton
> Hospital Nurses
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Striking nurses surround vans of out-of-state
> replacements
> 
> by Sarah Ovaska, The Patriot Ledger
> 
> June 15, 2001
> 
> QUINCY - Singing the words to Twisted Sister's
> "We're Not Gonna Take 
> It," striking Brockton Hospital nurses held signs
> and surrounded vans 
> filled with replacement workers near the Marriott
> hotel in the Crown 
> Colony office park.
> 
> About 20 nurses yesterday encouraged drivers to
> sound their horns in 
> support of striking nurses and held signs that read
> "Scabs go home" 
> and "Scabs at the Marriott."
> 
> More than 200 out-of-state replacement workers are
> staffing Brockton 
> Hospital during the strike. Some replacement nurses
> are staying at 
> the Marriott, said Robert Hughes, the vice 
> president of Brockton 
> Hospital.
> 
> The nurses went on strike May 25. They had been
> working without a 
> contract since September.
> 
> Vans with replacement nurses stopped as the nurses
> held signs up to 
> windows near the entrance to the Marriott yesterday.
> Some of the 
> striking nurses also tried to take pictures of the 
> replacement 
> nurses to post on a web site about the strike, said
> David Falk of 
> Stoughton, a Brockton Hospital nurse.
> 
> During negotiations Tuesday, hospital administrators
> didn't offer the 
> nurses enough, said Charlene Poliseno of Hanover, a
> 17-year 
> registered nurse at Brockton Hospital.
> 
> "They had nothing to offer us," she said.
> "Hopefully, we'll go back 
> (to negotiate) again soon."
> 
> Hughes agreed that no progress was made at talks but
> said the 
> hospital had offered nurses what they have
> requested.
> 
> "The strike could end quickly," he said. "We've
> given the nurses 
> everything they've asked for."
> 
> He said the Brockton Hospital nurses were highly
> skilled and the 
> highest paid in the region.
> 
> The nurses disagreed with Hughes

Re: suburbia

[Louis Proyect]

>Sorta sounds like the American suburb, which is hardly a 
>prefiguration of utopia in any social or ecological sense. Is there 
>some compelling reason, other than the fact that Marx & Engels urged 
>it, to do this?
>
>Doug

Sorta sounds like the American suburb? No, this is not what I am talking
about at all. Suburbia represents white flight from post-WWII megapolises
like NYC, Chicago, etc. What I am talking about has never really existed.
Modern cities were created as a response to the capitalist market. The sort
of city I am talking about will emerge as a response to socialist planning.
For insights into how socialists think, you're best bet is to look at
Bauhaus literature of the more theoretical sort. I can provide you a
reading list if you'd like. I am sure you would find it most informative.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: Re: Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)

[Louis Proyect]

>Even from a long range perspective, eliminating the difference between
>city and country means industrializing (citifying) the country as well
>as 'ruralizing' the city.
>
>Carrol

Wrong.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

FW: Tom Athanasiou/Kuznets Curve

[michael pugliese]

   Tom has a good book on ecology and capitalism. Some yrs. back
had a few pieces in Socialist Review. The Kuznets Curve (and
Pareto Optimality) I leave to y'all dismal scientists! Michael
Pugliese
>From: Progressive Response <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: 6/26/01 1:51:35 PM
>

>Click http://www.fpif.org/progresp/volume5/v5n20.html to view
an
>HTML-formatted version of this issue of Progressive Response.
>
>
>
>-
>
>The Progressive Response 26 June 2001 Vol. 5, No. 20
>Editor: Tom Barry
>
>-
>
>The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign
Policy in
>Focus (FPIF)--a "Think Tank Without Walls." A joint project
of the
>Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy
Studies,
>FPIF is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated
to
>"making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner
by
>advancing citizen movements and agendas." We encourage responses
to the
>opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters
and
>Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining
our network,
>please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/.
>
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>-
>
>I. Updates and Out-Takes
>
>*** RAISE A GLASS TO KYOTO ***
>By Tom Athanasiou
>
>*** HIV/AIDS GLOBAL TRUST FUND ***
>By Chinua Akukwe and Melvin Foote, Constituency for Africa
>
>*** UN BETRAYAL OF WESTERN SAHARA APPEARS IMMINENT ***
>By Stephen Zunes
>
>
>II. Letters and Comments
>*** HAVE FAITH IN THE KUZNETS CURVE ***
>
>-
>
>I. Updates and Out-Takes
>
>*** RAISE A GLASS TO KYOTO ***
>By Tom Athanasiou
>
>(Editor's Note: The new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary gives
voice to a 
>compelling new approach to climate change issues that is being
embraced by 
>environmental activists around the world. Instead of framing
solutions 
>solely in terms of national commitments, the equity approach
looks at the 
>climate change crisis in terms of per capita emissions and thereby
points 
>to the heavy burden faced by Western nations, particularly the
U.S. and its 
>citizens, to establishing regulatory structures that dramatically
reduce 
>the dependence on fossil fuels. Excerpted below, the entire
commentary is 
>posted at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0106kyoto.html)
>
>The climate showdown, as everyone knows, is coming soon. The
Europeans are 
>doing their best to ratify Kyoto, but the Japanese essential
to any 
>ratification coalition that lacks the U.S.--are waffling, and
the U.S. is 
>going to do everything in its power to get its way. If it does,
the setback 
>will be both serious and demoralizing. So it's important to
realize that, 
>whatever happens, the Kyoto Protocol has already succeeded--if
only as the 
>"good first step" that its defenders always claimed it would
be. Moreover, 
>if Kyoto goes down, there will be serious collateral damage,
a point that 
>G.W. Bush's handlers have only recently begun to realize.
>
>The recent tussle over Kyoto has moved the debate about the
next step out 
>of the conference halls and onto the front pages. The responsibility
of the 
>rich world is now a matter of public discussion, as is the problem
of 
>designing a fair global carbon treaty in an unfair world. No
matter what 
>happens in the next year, the debate has started at earnest,
and it's going 
>to be a good one. Even the realists in foreign policy circles
are realizing 
>that ecology is now high politics.
>
>Kyoto has already succeeded, for it's focused the debate about
"sustainable 
>development" in a way that no other initiative has been able
to do. It has 
>widened the split in the elite classes (let's call the two sides
"the 
>Neanderthals" and "the Neoliberals"). It has also shifted the
balance of 
>American electoral politics (Senator Jeffords, the author of
a 
>once-promising bill that would have regulated carbon dioxide
in the utility 
>sector, has cited "environmental differences" as one of the
reasons he 
>switched sides) and made it quite impossible for the U.S. to
refuse the 
>coming greenhouse treaty without sharply accelerating the erosion
of its 
>geopolitical hegemony. All this is still the overture; as the
EU pursues 
>ratification, and when the climate transition finally begins
in earnest, 
>there will be a great deal more.
>
>True, the negotiations could end in disaster, and clearly the
U.S. is going 
>to do everything in its power to see that they do. The exciting
thing, 
>however, is that it looks like the Neanderthals, and particularly
the 
>administration of George II, aren't go

suburbia

[Doug Henwood]

Carrol Cox wrote:

>Even from a long range perspective, eliminating the difference between
>city and country means industrializing (citifying) the country as well
>as 'ruralizing' the city.

Sorta sounds like the American suburb, which is hardly a 
prefiguration of utopia in any social or ecological sense. Is there 
some compelling reason, other than the fact that Marx & Engels urged 
it, to do this?

Doug

Re: Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)

[Carrol Cox]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> 
> > 
> Farming without industrial inputs & equipment tends to be very
> labor-intensive, often involving back-breaking labor for tilling,
> sowing, weeding, watering, & harvesting.

Speaking of what will be the nature of post-revolutionary agriculture
seems on the whole to me to be an extreme case of trying to write
recipes for the cookshops of the future. We simply can't know. As a sort
of casual footnote to this point of Yoshie's I will mention that after
54+ years I still remember as one of the most horrible days of my life
(worse than the day I broke my hip or the day I broke my wrist or any of
the days in basic training or in a factory working a nine hour day or my
experience of whooping cough or my first day in the polio ward) was a
day I spent planting strawberries on a very primitive strawberry
planter. There is a lot to be said for any and all efforts to get rid of
pesticides. Applying them can be a rather miserable experience. I
suspect most romanticizations of farming and getting close to the soil
come from those who never had the misfortune of actually living close to
the soil.

Even from a long range perspective, eliminating the difference between
city and country means industrializing (citifying) the country as well
as 'ruralizing' the city.

Carrol

  Peasants & agricultural
> workers themselves would benefit from & probably desire labor-saving
> technology in the absence of fear of unemployment.
> 
> Yoshie

Northern Migration of Sharecroppers in the 1920s

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*   ...The Northern Migration of Sharecroppers in the 1920s


After Reconstruction, the transitional period immediately following 
the Civil War, a slow and steady stream of African Americans began 
leaving the South for the North and the West. A bigger exodus, known 
as the "Great Migration," began with World War I. Increased 
mechanization in farming left sharecroppers with little to do. But 
with its booming cotton economy, the Mississippi Delta still 
attracted a steady influx of migrants from the rest of the South. At 
its inception, sharecropping in the Delta held the promise of a 
decent standard of living and independence. In theory, with a good 
harvest, everyone stood to make money.

In reality, planters exploited the system to their advantage, and 
sharecroppers often wound up in debt at the end of each year. With no 
income during the off season, croppers were forced to buy food, 
clothing and other necessary supplies on credit from the plantation 
commissaries. Prices were exorbitant, goods were shoddy and debt 
piled up. When harvest time came around, tenants were often forced to 
sell their share of the crop directly to the plantation at below 
market prices. After the harvest, the tenants often failed to earn 
enough to cover their debts. While Delta planters enjoyed great 
prosperity, their tenants were stuck in an endless cycle of debt. As 
plantations consolidated and centralized, what little opportunities 
for advancement the croppers once had slipped away. Entrenched in 
poverty, sharecroppers began heading north for industrial jobs.

Grinding poverty was not the only reason African Americans left the 
Delta. In the 1920s, the threat of racial violence loomed over the 
South. The law in the Delta had never offered much protection for 
African Americans. But with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 
1920s, the violence and intimidation only intensified. In fact, there 
were far fewer lynchings in the Delta than in the rest of the state, 
but this provided little solace for the Delta African American 
community, who still lived in fear of mob violence and lynchings.

Migration was also spurred on by the lack of educational 
opportunities in the Delta. While the Percy family had ensured that 
African Americans in Washington County had access to decent 
education, this wasn't the case in the rest of the Delta. White 
school boards seldom hired enough teachers for African American 
students, and the teachers they did bother to hire were almost never 
college graduates. In one county, there were only three teachers for 
a population of 350 students. During the harvest season matters only 
got worse. Across the Delta officials refused to open schools until 
every last bit of the harvest had been brought in. At times, schools 
didn't open for the year until mid-November.

After the Great Flood of 1927, there was less reason than ever to 
stay in the Delta. Homes were destroyed, possessions were gone and 
crops were ruined. One Greenville sharecropper put it succinctly when 
he explained that he had to "get my famaly out of this cursed South 
land -- down here a Negro man is not good as a white man's dog."

Leaving, however, was easier said than done. Delta planters' fortunes 
depended on African American labor, and they were determined to keep 
tenants on their plantations. While some offered better conditions to 
induce sharecroppers to stay, others resorted to intimidation and 
brute force to keep tenants from leaving. Tenants wishing to leave 
generally slipped away under the cover of darkness, not telling 
anyone of their plans, lest word spread to the plantation house. 
Train stations were guarded and African Americans found on trains 
were pulled off and sent back to their plantations. To escape, 
croppers fleeing the Delta often walked 10 or more miles to board a 
train in another town.

For African Americans, the favored destination was Chicago. From 1920 
to 1930, the African American population exploded in Chicago, 
increasing from 109,458 to 233,903 residents in just a decade. The 
Great Migration of people was accompanied by a musical migration; 
Delta blues music travelled to Chicago and put down new roots in the 
city. Although the North was no promised land, conditions were better 
for African Americans, and migrants who left seldom returned.

   *

Then & now, oppressed & disfranchised laborers of rural areas vote 
with their feet -- to urban & industrial areas.

Yoshie

FW: [marxist] Green anti-capitalism

[michael pugliese]

See below for Michael Malkin article. Malkin, btw, is reputed
to be a former MI5 or MI6 agent, scuttlebutt has it. Kinda doubt
it. Doubtless some overheated sect like the SLP in the UK came
up with that. Michael Pugliese
>From: W W <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: 6/26/01 2:20:07 PM
>

>COMMUNIST PARTY SCHOOL
>'Anti-capitalisms: past, present and future'
>June 30/July 1, University of London Union, Malet Street, London
WC1 
>(nearest tubes - Goodge Street and Tottenham Court Road) - Room
3A, 10.30am
>
>Marxism is not the only anti-capitalism. In four sessions over
two days, we 
>will be looking at the rivals to proletarian anti-capitalism,
both 
>historically and in their contemporary forms. The school will
examine: -
>
>Anarchist anti-capitalism
>While the active membership of most anarchist groups remains
small, their 
>supposedly 'non-hierarchical' forms of organisation and espousal
of 'extreme 
>freedom' strike a chord with large numbers of disaffected youth

>internationally. But what is the real anarchist tradition? Tina
Becker looks 
>at the careers of figures such as Bakunin and draws parallels
with today's 
>movement.
>
>Anti-corporate anti-capitalism
>Naomi Klein's book No logo has become a manifesto for many in
the 
>anti-capitalist movement. The mood of popular anger against
unaccountable 
>power and blatant exploitation of our world by the trans-nationals
is truly 
>mass. But is the neo-populism espoused by Klein and others a
real 
>alternative to international capitalism? Mark Fischer doubts
it.
>
>Green anti-capitalism
>The politics of the ecology movement have seeped into contemporary
society 
>as 'common-sense'. Even on the left, it is taken as given that
we have to 
>mix our red with a little green. Michael Malkin looks at the
real 
>relationship between socialism and green politics.
>
>Zapatista anti-capitalism
>On New Year's Day 1994, a guerrilla group seized six towns in
the Chiapas 
>state of Mexico. The Zapatistas - dubbed "the first post-modernist
guerrilla 
>group" by the New York Times - proved an inspiration to the
anti-capitalist 
>movement internationally. But despite their heroism, do groups
such as the 
>Zapatistas - with their nationally based, backward-looking 'socialisms'
- 
>offer a genuinely progressive solution to the ills of humanity.
Are they the 
>future? John Bridge looks at the lessons of history.
>
>Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a recommended reading list. The
full weekend 
>costs £10, one day £5. (£5/£2 for Party supporters and unwaged).
Attendance 
>is restricted, so send off as soon as possible. Let us know
if you need 
>accommodation.
>
>
>_
>Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
>
>
>"[C]apital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore,
with blood and dirt."
>--Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter 31
>
>Community email addresses:
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>
>

Re: Puzzle of the day

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>- Original Message -
>From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>>Curious what you are noting here?
>>
>>Nathan Newman
>
>-I think Michael is referring to the problems of under-staffing &
>-mandatory overtime:
>
>But the need for mandatory overtime to deal with under-staffing is exactly
>what is giving nursing unions strength.  Because nursing is a credentialled
>profession and unions cannot force new hires that don't exist (unlike say in
>autowork), mandatory overtime is an inevitable result.
>
>That is the short-term issue- the question is the long-term trend and that
>is looking better for nurses, although hospitals are trying to divide the
>workforce, split work off to lower-paid job descriptions, etc.  But the
>nursing unions are getting much more radical- with independent unions like
>the Cal Nurses Association working with the MA and PA nursing associations
>on a new national union, while even the stodgy American Nurses Association
>is affiliating with the AFL-CIO after years of avoiding being seen as too
>much of  a union (interesting politics in that division, as well as with
>SEIU).
>
>-- Nathan Newman

I agree with you about the long-term trend, but it appears that 
potential hires do exist now, since hospitals come up with scabs in 
response to striking nurses:

*   To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 02:11:14 -0400
Subject: Nurse Strikers Surround Scabs (Brockton, Mass)

Nurse Strikers Surround Scabs

1. Striking nurses surround vans of out-of-state replacements
2. What the Community Can Do To Support the Brockton Hospital Nurses




Striking nurses surround vans of out-of-state replacements

by Sarah Ovaska, The Patriot Ledger

June 15, 2001

QUINCY - Singing the words to Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take 
It," striking Brockton Hospital nurses held signs and surrounded vans 
filled with replacement workers near the Marriott hotel in the Crown 
Colony office park.

About 20 nurses yesterday encouraged drivers to sound their horns in 
support of striking nurses and held signs that read "Scabs go home" 
and "Scabs at the Marriott."

More than 200 out-of-state replacement workers are staffing Brockton 
Hospital during the strike. Some replacement nurses are staying at 
the Marriott, said Robert Hughes, the vice  president of Brockton 
Hospital.

The nurses went on strike May 25. They had been working without a 
contract since September.

Vans with replacement nurses stopped as the nurses held signs up to 
windows near the entrance to the Marriott yesterday. Some of the 
striking nurses also tried to take pictures of the  replacement 
nurses to post on a web site about the strike, said David Falk of 
Stoughton, a Brockton Hospital nurse.

During negotiations Tuesday, hospital administrators didn't offer the 
nurses enough, said Charlene Poliseno of Hanover, a 17-year 
registered nurse at Brockton Hospital.

"They had nothing to offer us," she said. "Hopefully, we'll go back 
(to negotiate) again soon."

Hughes agreed that no progress was made at talks but said the 
hospital had offered nurses what they have requested.

"The strike could end quickly," he said. "We've given the nurses 
everything they've asked for."

He said the Brockton Hospital nurses were highly skilled and the 
highest paid in the region.

The nurses disagreed with Hughes' assessment of the talks.

"The key piece is that we need some guarantee of staffing," said Tina 
Russell, co-chairman of the strikers' bargaining unit. "The lack of 
staffing is driving the mandatory overtime."

Negotiations probably won't resume for at least a week, said Julie 
Pinkham, the executive director of the Massachusetts Nursing 
Association, the nurses' union.

The response from drivers to the picketers yesterday was an 
encouraging sign that the public is aware and supportive, several 
nurses said.

"Even outside the Brockton community people understand what all 
about," said Karen Higgins of Weymouth, a nurse at Boston Medical 
Center.

Higgins has been picketing with the Brockton nurses because she 
agrees with their cause and wants hospital administrators to know 
that nurses object to mandatory overtime.

"We know the issue" of understaffing and mandatory overtime, Higgins 
said. "We want the practice stopped."

==
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Sharecropping, Mechanization, & Migration

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*   Share Croppers Union

Robin D. G. Kelley

A predominantly black underground organization of sharecroppers, 
tenant farmers, and agricultural laborers, the Share Croppers Union 
(SCU) was the largest Communist-led mass organization in the Deep 
South. Founded in Alabama in the spring of 1931, the organization was 
first initiated by black tenant farmers in Tallapoosa County. Ralph 
and Tommy Gray gathered together a small group of black tenant 
farmers and sharecroppers and requested assistance from the Communist 
Party in Birmingham. Mack Coad, an illiterate black steelworker 
originally from Charleston, South Carolina, was dispatched from 
Birmingham on behalf of the Communist Party and became the first 
secretary of the Croppers and Farm Workers Union. Based mainly in 
Tallapoosa and Lee counties, Alabama, under Coad's leadership the 
union built up an estimated membership of eight hundred within a 
two-month period.

In July 1931, the union faced its first in a series of violent 
confrontations with local authorities. A shootout between union 
members and the local sheriff at Camp Hill, Alabama, left Ralph Gray 
dead and forced many union and non-union tenant farmers into hiding. 
Mack Coad was forced to flee Alabama for the time being, but the 
union regrouped under the leadership of Young Communist League 
activist Eula Gray, Tommy Gray's teenage daughter. Once the union was 
reconstructed, it adopted the name SCU.

By the summer of 1932, the reconstituted SCU claimed six hundred 
members and a new secretary was appointed. Al Murphy, a black 
Birmingham Communist originally from McRae, Georgia, transformed the 
SCU into a secret, underground organization. SCU militants were armed 
for self-defense and met under the auspices of "Bible meetings" and 
"sewing clubs." Under Murphy's leadership, the union spread into the 
"black belt" counties of Alabama and into a few areas on the 
Georgia-Alabama border.

In December 1932, another shootout occurred near Reeltown, Alabama 
(not far from Camp Hill), which resulted in the deaths of SCU members 
Clifford James, John McMullen, and Milo Bentley, and the wounding of 
several others. The confrontation erupted when SCU members tried to 
resist the seizure of James's livestock by local authorities who were 
acting on behalf of James's creditors. Following a wave of arrests 
and beatings, five SCU members were convicted and jailed for assault 
with a deadly weapon.

Faced with large-scale evictions resulting from New Deal acreage 
reduction policies, sharecroppers flocked to the union. Its growth 
was by no means hindered by the gun battle. By June 1933, Murphy 
claimed nearly two thousand members, and by the fall of 1934 the 
official figures skyrocketed to eight thousand. Although most of 
those who joined the union were victims of mass evictions, the SCU 
led a series of strikes by cotton pickers in Tallapoosa, Montgomery, 
and Lee counties. Nevertheless by 1934 the SCU had failed to recruit 
a single white member. The Party attempted to form an all-white 
Tenants League, but the effort proved to be a dismal failure.

Murphy, who left Alabama in the winter of 1934, was replaced by Clyde 
Johnson (alias Thomas Burke and Al Jackson), a white Communist 
originally from Minnesota who had had considerable experience as an 
organizer in Birmingham, Atlanta, and Rome, Georgia. Partially 
reflecting the new outlook of the Popular Front, Johnson made an 
effort to bring the SCU out of its underground existence and 
transform it into a legitimate agricultural labor union. He founded 
and edited the SCU's first newspaper, the Union Leader, and created 
an executive committee that elected Hosie Hart, a black Communist 
from Tallapoosa County, as president. Johnson attempted to establish 
a merger with the newly formed, Socialist-led Southern Tenant Farmers 
Union, but the leadership of the latter, particularly H. L. Mitchell 
and J. R. Butler, rejected the idea, claiming that the SCU was merely 
a Communist front.

Throughout 1935, despite the union's push for legal status in the 
black belt, SCU activists faced severe repression during a cotton 
choppers' strike in the spring and a cotton pickers' strike between 
August and September. In Lowndes and Dallas counties, in particular, 
dozens of strikers were jailed and beaten, and at least six people 
were killed.

In 1936 the SCU, claiming between ten thousand and twelve thousand 
members, spread into Louisiana and Mississippi. It opened its first 
public headquarters in New Orleans and, in an attempt to transform 
the SCU into a trade union, officially abandoned its underground 
structure. However, the SCU failed to deter the rapid process of 
proletarianization occurring in the cotton South--a manifestation of 
mass evictions and the mechanization of agriculture. Johnson 
continued to make overtures toward the Southern Tenant Farmers Union 
throughout 1936, but all efforts to combine the two unions failed. 
Thus, 

Re: Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)

[Louis Proyect]

>Genetic engineering is not limited to agriculture -- it can be & has 
>been used for production of medicines (in Cuba as well).  As for 
>genetic engineering in agriculture, it may be very well used to 
>decrease the need for pesticides, irrigation, & chemical fertilizers. 
>What's wrong with pursuing such an objective once we abolish 
>capitalism & build socialism?

The problem with genetic engineering in agriculture (I leave medical uses
aside) is that it opens the door to cataclysmic events in nature, despite
the best intentions of humanity, even socialist humanity. This is the
reason that atomic energy would be a terrible idea as well.

>Farming without industrial inputs & equipment tends to be very 
>labor-intensive, often involving back-breaking labor for tilling, 
>sowing, weeding, watering, & harvesting.  Peasants & agricultural 
>workers themselves would benefit from & probably desire labor-saving 
>technology in the absence of fear of unemployment.

It is not about tractors, etc. It is about chemicals, etc. Right now the
big problem is monoculture, which is necessary for large scale
agri-business, particularly exports in wheat, corn and other lucrative
commodities. By reintegrating animals with food production, you move in the
direction of resolving the metabolic rift. Furthermore, when cities are
located next to sustainable food sources which makes the long-distance
nature of industrial farming less essential. This is what some greens call
"bioregionalism". It makes sense as far as it goes. What it is lacking is
an understanding of the enemy that confronts us and how to defeat it. For
that socialism is required.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: Behind the Organic-Industrial Complex

[Louis Proyect]

>Food will be, in the foreseeable future, either cheap & industrial or 
>expensive, labor-intensive, & more organic than USDA-organic.  Under 
>capitalism there is no other choice.  Will there be other choices 
>under socialism?
>
>Yoshie

Absolutely. Under socialism there will be more than enough food to eat for
everybody although I can't vouch for things like sugar, chocolate, tea,
coffee, bananas, flowers, tobacco, etc. which an obscene amount of land and
water is being used to support today. Furthermore, organic agriculture is
not what ecosocialists are primarily interested in. These sorts of botique
operations cater to the Utne Reader clientele. For a better understanding
of the future of socialist agriculture, you'd have to start thinking in
utopian terms. Not in the sense of utopian socialism like Fourier but
utopian in the sense of an ambitious restructuring of society and
developing new ties to nature. As such, to speak of huckleberry farms in
northern California, etc. is a diversion.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: Re: Re: Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)

[Louis Proyect]

>Wow. Genetic engineering of insulin using e coli  goes against the basic
>principles of soil chemistry.
>No kidding. I didnt know that!
>
>Cheers, Ken Hanly

No, it goes against the basic principles of ecology. Soil chemistry is
necessary to understand ecological problems. Many soil chemists, on the
other hand, have no trouble defending unscientific farming practices such
as the "green revolution".

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Behind the Organic-Industrial Complex

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*   New York Times 13 May 2001

Behind the Organic-Industrial Complex

By MICHAEL POLLAN

...IV. Down on the Industrial Organic Farm

No farm I have ever visited before prepared me for the industrial 
organic farms I saw in California. When I think about organic 
farming, I think family farm, I think small scale, I think hedgerows 
and compost piles and battered pickup trucks. I don't think migrant 
laborers, combines, thousands of acres of broccoli reaching clear to 
the horizon. To the eye, these farms look exactly like any other 
industrial farm in California -- and in fact the biggest organic 
operations in the state today are owned and operated by conventional 
mega-farms. The same farmer who is applying toxic fumigants to 
sterilize the soil in one field is in the next field applying compost 
to nurture the soil's natural fertility.

Is there something wrong with this picture? It all depends on where 
you stand. Gene Kahn makes the case that the scale of a farm has no 
bearing on its fidelity to organic principles and that unless organic 
"scales up" it will "never be anything more than yuppie food." To 
prove his point, Kahn sent me to visit large-scale farms whose 
organic practices were in many ways quite impressive, including the 
Central Valley operation that grows vegetables for his frozen dinners 
and tomatoes for Muir Glen.

Greenways Organic is a successful 2,000-acre organic-produce 
operation tucked into a 24,000-acre conventional farm outside Fresno; 
the crops, the machines, the crews, the rotations and the fields were 
indistinguishable, and yet two very different kinds of industrial 
agriculture are being practiced here side by side.

In place of petrochemical fertilizers, Greenways's organic fields are 
nourished by compost made by the ton at a horse farm nearby. Insects 
are controlled with biological agents and beneficial insects like 
lacewings. Frequent and carefully timed tilling, as well as propane 
torches, keeps down the weeds, perhaps the industrial organic 
farmer's single stiffest challenge. This approach is at best a 
compromise: running tillers through the soil so frequently is 
destructive to its tilth, yet weeding a 160-acre block of broccoli by 
hand is unrealistic.

Since Greenways grows the same crops conventionally and organically, 
I was interested to hear John Diener, one of the farm's three 
partners, say he knew for a fact that his organic crops were 
"better," and not only because they hadn't been doused with 
pesticide. When Diener takes his tomatoes to the cannery, the organic 
crop reliably receives higher Brix scores -- a measure of the sugars 
in fruits and vegetables. It seems that crops grown on nitrogen 
fertilizer take up considerably more water, thereby diluting their 
nutrients, sugars and flavors. The same biochemical process could 
explain why many people -- including the many chefs who swear by 
organic ingredients -- believe organic produce simply tastes better. 
With less water in it, the flavor and the nutrients of a floret of 
organic broccoli will be more concentrated than one grown with 
chemical fertilizers.

It's too simple to say that smaller organic farms are automatically 
truer to the organic ideal than big ones. In fact, the organic ideal 
is so exacting -- a sustainable system that requires not only no 
synthetic chemicals but also few purchased inputs of any kind and 
that returns as much to the soil as it removes -- that it is most 
often honored in the breach. Yet the farmers who come closest to 
achieving this ideal do tend to be smaller in scale. These are the 
farmers who plant dozens of different crops in fields that resemble 
quilts and practice long and elaborate rotations, thereby achieving 
the rich biodiversity in space and time that is the key to making a 
farm sustainable.

For better or worse, these are not the kinds of farms Small Planet 
Foods does business with today. It's simply more efficient to buy 
from one 1,000-acre farm than 10 100-acre farms. Indeed, Cascadian 
Farm the corporation can't even afford to use produce from Cascadian 
Farm the farm: it's too small. So the berries grown there are sold at 
a roadside stand, while the company buys berries for freezing from as 
far away as Chile.

The big question is whether the logic of an industrial food chain can 
be reconciled to the logic of the natural systems on which organic 
agriculture has tried to model itself. Put another way, Is 
"industrial organic" a contradiction in terms?

Kahn is convinced it is not, but others both inside and outside his 
company see a tension. Sarah Huntington is one of Cascadian's oldest 
employees. She worked alongside Kahn on the farm and at one time or 
another has held just about every job in the company. "The maw of 
that processing plant beast eats 10 acres of cornfield an hour," she 
told me. "And you're locked into planting a particular variety like 
Jubilee that ripens all at once and holds up in processing. So you 

Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Lou says:

>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.

Genetic engineering is not limited to agriculture -- it can be & has 
been used for production of medicines (in Cuba as well).  As for 
genetic engineering in agriculture, it may be very well used to 
decrease the need for pesticides, irrigation, & chemical fertilizers. 
What's wrong with pursuing such an objective once we abolish 
capitalism & build socialism?

Farming without industrial inputs & equipment tends to be very 
labor-intensive, often involving back-breaking labor for tilling, 
sowing, weeding, watering, & harvesting.  Peasants & agricultural 
workers themselves would benefit from & probably desire labor-saving 
technology in the absence of fear of unemployment.

Yoshie

Re: Re: Puzzle of the day

[Nathan Newman]

- Original Message -
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


>Curious what you are noting here?
>
>Nathan Newman

-I think Michael is referring to the problems of under-staffing &
-mandatory overtime:

But the need for mandatory overtime to deal with under-staffing is exactly
what is giving nursing unions strength.  Because nursing is a credentialled
profession and unions cannot force new hires that don't exist (unlike say in
autowork), mandatory overtime is an inevitable result.

That is the short-term issue- the question is the long-term trend and that
is looking better for nurses, although hospitals are trying to divide the
workforce, split work off to lower-paid job descriptions, etc.  But the
nursing unions are getting much more radical- with independent unions like
the Cal Nurses Association working with the MA and PA nursing associations
on a new national union, while even the stodgy American Nurses Association
is affiliating with the AFL-CIO after years of avoiding being seen as too
much of  a union (interesting politics in that division, as well as with
SEIU).

-- Nathan Newman

Re: where is the gas coming from?

[Ken Hanly]

Canada?

Cheers, Ken Hanly

- Original Message -
From: Mark Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 2:52 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:13999] where is the gas coming from?


> >>HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 25, 2001--Industrial
> Information Resources Inc. (IIR) has confirmed 1,453 new
> power generating units in development capable of producing an
> additional 179,946 mega-watts (MW) of new capacity for the
> U.S., scheduled to come online over the next 24 months...<<
>
> This will require 8.7 Tcf increase in total US natural gas supply -- about
a
> 20% annual increase -- when
> production is flat or declining. Where is the natural gas coming from?
> Perhaps Doug needs to ask his 'experts' one more time.
>
> Mark Jones
>

trying to unsub

[Issam Mansour]

Hi all,

I've been trying to unsub for several days without success.  Could the List 
Dungeon Master unsub me please.  I am going on vacation for a few weeks and 
must miss all the stimulating discussions.

Thanks,

Issam Mansour

Re: Puzzle of the day

[Carrol Cox]

Michael Perelman wrote:
> 
> Nurses are highly trained and in very short supply. 

Some occupations can be simultaneously in short supply and in surplus.
This has been the case with teachers for 30 years. In terms of material
need, there has been a desperate shortage of teachers. In terms of the
number schoolboards (ultimately, the ruling class) is willing to hire
(in terms of the educational services it is willing to offer), they have
been in oversupply. In terms of health needs, we are desperately short
of nurses. In terms of the health care the rulers are willing to offer
us, there is a plentiful supply of nurses.

This is off the top of my head. Comment?

Carrol

Re: Re: Re: Cuban Genetic Engineering (was Jesse Lemisch)

[Ken Hanly]

Wow. Genetic engineering of insulin using e coli  goes against the basic
principles of soil chemistry.
No kidding. I didnt know that!

Cheers, Ken Hanly

- Original Message -
From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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.
>
>
>

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

BLS DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2001:

> The median compensation level for top human resource executives has
> climbed to more than $200,000 in salary and bonuses, according to survey
> results released at the Society for Human Resource Management's annual
> conference.  In general, the pay levels reported in the 2001 HR
> compensation survey are higher than those reported in the 2000 survey.
> Positions for which large numbers of responding employers were able to
> report compensation data increases ranged from 8.7 percent for payroll
> managers to 2.0 percent for HR generalists and compensation analysts.  The
> 2001 survey reports median pay levels of $68,000 for payroll managers,
> $50,000 for HR generalists, and $45,000 for compensation analysts.  The
> median compensation level for technical trainers was $58,000 in 2001, 15.2
> percent above the 2000 median.  The median pay level for equal employment
> opportunity/diversity managers is $90,000, a jump of 11.5 percent over
> last year's figure.  In contrast, the survey recorded increases of 2.0
> percent or less for a number of lower-level jobs (Daily Labor Report, page
> A-4).
> 
> More than one-third of the American public has not yet developed a
> financial plan in preparation for retirement, according to a Scudder
> Investments survey dated June 2001.  Eighty percent of higher income
> households, those with incomes greater than $50,000, have developed one,
> however.  To prepare for retirement, 72 percent of Americans are cutting
> expenses, 49 percent are contributing to a 401(k) plan, and 35 percent are
> contributing to an IRA or SEP.  GenXers (age 25-36) contribute to 401(k)
> plans more than any other generation (66 percent).  GIs and WWII veterans
> (age 69+) contribute to IRAs or SEPs more than any other generation (46
> percent).  Forty percent of women, compared with 28 percent of men, are
> depending on Social Security (Daily Labor Report, page A-5).
> 
> Hundreds of thousands of women in their 60's, part of the surge of
> divorces that started a generation ago, are finding themselves forced to
> stay in the work force because they lack sufficient money to retire.
> Wages, in effect, are becoming their pensions.   Women alone in old age
> have always been at greater risk of falling into poverty than have married
> women.  But until recently, women alone generally meant widows, who at
> least had the pensions and savings their husbands had left them, and a
> tradition of living with children.. Widows greatly outnumbered older
> divorced women until the late 1990's, but now for the first time the
> divorced outnumber widows.   The median weekly wage of a woman working
> full time today is only 76 percent of a man's weekly median, the Labor
> Department reports -- qualifying women for smaller pensions.  And women
> are less likely to hold jobs that include company pensions than are men.
> Putting all these advantages together, men over the age of 65 average
> nearly $30,000 a year in income, double the average for women. .. As a
> result of the various pressures, the labor  force participation rates of
> women in their early 60's -- covering those holding jobs or hunting for
> them -- rose to a record 40.1 percent last year, from 32.6 percent in
> 1981, and there has been a similar steady rise among women in their late
> 60's.  The proportion of older men in the labor force, in contrast, has
> fallen significantly the last 30 years, although recently it has inched
> up.  (Louis Uchitelle, The New York Times, page 1).  
> 
> Last week, the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of academics
> widely considered to be the official referee of economic cycles,  released
> a statement saying that there is now "the possibility that a recession
> began recently.  But Alan Greenspan, his colleagues at the Fed, and nearly
> all Wall Street economists think that the $10 trillion American economy
> can be turned around more quickly than ever before.  The credit, they say,
> belongs to a "new economy" that has survived the bursting of the dot-com
> bubble and is altering decades-old economic patterns. The technological
> innovations of recent years have allowed the average worker to produce
> more goods in an hour, most economists say.  This has kept inflation low
> because companies do not have to raise prices -- even as the long
> expansion has caused wages to rise -- to increase their profits.  (David
> Leonhardt, The New York Times, page C1).
> 
> Housing prices across the nation have held firm during the current
> economic downturn as a result of the Federal Reserve's aggressive policy
> to lower interest rates and the limited amount of homes available,
> according to a report to be released today by Harvard University's Joint
> Center for Housing Studies.  Both home prices and rents have risen faster
> than inflation in recent years.  The median sales price of a single-family
> home hit $145,500 in May, the highest on record, accor

Re: Re: Re: Marxism and ecology

[Doug Henwood]

Ann Li wrote:

>BTW, I just got back from a conference where displaced media workers from
>silicon gulch and silicon valley refer to themselves as "dot-communists".

The term has been around for a while. See Richard Barbrook at 
.

Doug

Re: Puzzle of the day

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>I'm curious what your definition of having a difficult time in the labor
>market means?  Nursing unions have had some success in recent years - more
>than most industries - and I believe nurses salaries have been increasing,
>even if they lag what their professional status no doubt deserves.
>
>Curious what you are noting here?
>
>Nathan Newman

I think Michael is referring to the problems of under-staffing & 
mandatory overtime:

*   To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 01:25:35 -0400
Subject: Nurses' Discontent Fuels Union Growth

Nurses' Discontent Fuels Union Growth

Discontent of Nurses Fuels Growth of Unions:
Two groups are gaining a rising number of members. Hospitals respond 
that the shortage of workers is the real problem.

By NEDRA RHONE, Times Staff Writer

Los Angeles Times - May 22, 2001

Overwhelmed by work and fearing a decline in care, more of the 
nation's 2 million registered nurses seek support through unions-- 
and California is leading the way.

Last year, the number of unionized nurses working in California 
hospitals jumped 6%. Last month alone, more than 2,000 registered 
nurses at seven hospitals--five in Southern California--joined the 
California Nurses Assn., which has more registered nurse members than 
any union in the state, a union spokesman said.

Nurses at the newly unionized hospitals said they made the decision 
only after many failed attempts to combat what they consider a 
frightening reduction in the quality of patient care largely caused 
by staffing shortages.

"We were very frustrated going to management and seeing them do 
nothing," said Marina Bass, a nurse at San Gabriel Valley Medical 
Center, which joined CNA in April. "Instead of leaving the place we 
love to work, we have decided to change it."

Nationwide Shortages

Hospitals charge that unions may be overestimating their ability to 
solve health industry problems and the reach of their organizing 
efforts.

"In the last couple of years, we have seen union efforts growing, but 
the majority of nurses in California are non- unionized," said Jan 
Emerson, spokeswoman for the California Health Care Assn.

Emerson and other hospital representatives said unions are no more 
equipped to turn things around than anyone else in a state that is 
suffering disproportionately from a nationwide nursing shortage.

"Unless the unions can produce more nurses . . . I'm not sure they 
are going to do any better at solving the problem. The nursing 
shortage is our No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 priorities," said Jim Lott, 
executive vice president of the Health Care Assn. of Southern 
California, a hospital trade group.

Of the more than 130,000 active hospital RNs in California, about 41% 
are unionized, according to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau -- up 
from about 34% in 1995.

CNA officials said the gains in a recent blitz are unprecedented. "It 
is the most incredible explosion I've seen in my career," said Rose 
Ann DeMoro, a 16-year union veteran and executive director of CNA.

Service Employees International Union, the second largest group of 
organized registered nurses in California, has about 25 000 RN 
members, a spokesman said.

California is ground zero in organizing efforts because of the 
nursing shortage here and heavy cost-cutting under managed care, 
DeMoro said.

Steve Trossman, spokesman for the service employees union, said 
burnout from working too many hours, having too many patients and 
being assigned to units for which they are not trained has made 
nurses take action.

Nurses are so busy and stressed they "go home and call back to the 
unit three and four times because they fear they have forgotten to do 
something," he said.

Largely because of union efforts, California is the first state to 
mandate minimum staffing ratios in hospitals and among the first to 
consider a bill to ban mandatory overtime. The CNA sponsored both 
bills. Other states have begun to follow California's lead. 
Nationally, only about 340,000 of the nation's 2 million nurses -- 
17% percent -- are organized.

Recently, Maine and Massachusetts joined California and Pennsylvania 
in breaking from the American Nurses Assn., which they believe is not 
aggressive enough, and establishing state-based organizations.

The breakaway groups plan to unite as an alternative national 
organization and have joined forces to sponsor a federal bill that 
would ban mandatory overtime.

Meanwhile, the union fever continues to spread in California, even in 
the southern half, where nurses traditionally have shunned unions.

In Northern California, where 80% of hospitals are organized, 
dramatic walkouts have become a common tactic among nurses demanding 
greater input in management decisions and improved wages.

Last July, 4,000 nurses and other hospital workers at 10 Northern 
California hospitals staged a 24-hour walkout, forcing hospital 
officials to scramble for temporary employees. Another daylong 
walkout five months later s

Re: Capitalism as an accident and freak ofnature

[Charles Brown]

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/26/01 03:53PM >>>
At 26/06/01 10:05 -0400, you wrote:
>Carrol Cox:
>
> >Characteristically, in a slave system, the overseer,
> > master, would tell the slaves: collate those newsletters. Period! 
> > This is incidentally key to what Yoshie and I and others are currently
> > battling out with Mark and Lou. Capitalism is _different_; it is very
> > near to _unnatural_, a freak, an accident which very well might not ever
> > appear were the tape of human history (using Gould's metaphor) to be run
> > over again.
>
>(
>
>CB: So, will socialism be an accident and freak of nature ?  What was the 
>natural course of history , had the freak accident not occurred causing 
>capitalism ?


Yes there is something freakish about it. It is a successful social system 
at a particular stage of the technical development of the means of 
production, which is highly social but *appears" to be the work of 
individual owners.



Charles B: Well, if you want to say it is contradictory, I agree. But contradiction is 
not freakish. On the contrary, contradiction is universal. Everything is a 
contradiction. As you say below ( after interesting musings)

"But is the smoothest course of history the most 'natural' one? Perhaps the 
struggle of contradictions is inseparable from change and development."


(((



It arose, oddly, out of cooperative, even almost communistic, guilds of 
merchants and miners. Its progress is inseparably associated with the rise 
of codes of legal rules that could be applied to individuals in abstract, 
bourgeois right. It was greatly helped by conditions in certain parts of 
Europe, dare I say it, particularly England, where the rise of the monarchy 
created an associated legal intelligentsia which was not purely clerical.

Contrast the mandarin stratum in China.

As a social mutant it is like a cancer: extremely invasive, extremely 
quickspreading. Because it has no inherent limits that it can address 
consciously (except to a limited degree by cartels and monopolies) it grows 
rapidly, apparently taking over the whole social life process. But this 
also predicts that it will be relatively very short lived in the span of 
human existence on this planet. Commodity exchange is longer, but even that 
stretches over less than 1% of human existence.

The way socialism comes about will be uniquely determined by its 
prehistory, but as a society consciously regulated by its members, it will 
be a reversion to a more balanced, less cancerous, pattern of human existence.

The whole debate about the origins of capitalism I suggest has forced 
everyone to consider that there may often be a mixture of coexisting 
relations of production in a society, but one is usually hegemonic.

A more 'natural' course of history would be a more slowly accumulating 
complexity of the means of production in a society capable of expanding its 
surplus more slowly. Again compare China, which had considerable 
technological developments, and there is no reason to think they would have 
stopped.

Note that Schweickart in Against Capitalism, accepts that under market 
socialism economic growth will recede in importance.

But is the smoothest course of history the most 'natural' one? Perhaps the 
struggle of contradictions is inseparable from change and development.

That at any rate, would be my response.

Chris Burford

London

Re: Re: Marxism and ecology

[Ann Li]

He still is? I recall coming across something about that in the 80s.

BTW, I just got back from a conference where displaced media workers from
silicon gulch and silicon valley refer to themselves as "dot-communists".

Ann

- Original Message -
From: "Michael Pugliese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 8:20 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:14019] Re: Marxism and ecology


>Lee Baxandall, who edited a collection on marxism and aesthetics in the
> 70's, now edits a nudist magazine.
> Michael Pugliese
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Keaney Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 1:07 AM
> Subject: [PEN-L:14001] Marxism and ecology
>
>
> > Chris Burford wrote:
> >
> > Marxism is neither sentimental humanism nor sentimental naturism.
> >
> > =
> >
> > I had a hunch those Nudists for Nader were suspect.
> >
> > Michael K.
> >
>
>

Re: Capitalism as an accident and freak of nature

[Chris Burford]

At 26/06/01 10:05 -0400, you wrote:
>Carrol Cox:
>
> >Characteristically, in a slave system, the overseer,
> > master, would tell the slaves: collate those newsletters. Period! 
> > This is incidentally key to what Yoshie and I and others are currently
> > battling out with Mark and Lou. Capitalism is _different_; it is very
> > near to _unnatural_, a freak, an accident which very well might not ever
> > appear were the tape of human history (using Gould's metaphor) to be run
> > over again.
>
>(
>
>CB: So, will socialism be an accident an freak of nature ?  What was the 
>natural course of history , had the freak accident not occurred causing 
>capitalism ?


Yes there is something freakish about it. It is a successful social system 
at a particular stage of the technical development of the means of 
production, which is highly social but *appears" to be the work of 
individual owners.

It arose, oddly, out of cooperative, even almost communistic, guilds of 
merchants and miners. Its progress is inseparably associated with the rise 
of codes of legal rules that could be applied to individuals in abstract, 
bourgeois right. It was greatly helped by conditions in certain parts of 
Europe, dare I say it, particularly England, where the rise of the monarchy 
created an associated legal intelligentsia which was not purely clerical.

Contrast the mandarin stratum in China.

As a social mutant it is like a cancer: extremely invasive, extremely 
quickspreading. Because it has no inherent limits that it can address 
consciously (except to a limited degree by cartels and monopolies) it grows 
rapidly, apparently taking over the whole social life process. But this 
also predicts that it will be relatively very short lived in the span of 
human existence on this planet. Commodity exchange is longer, but even that 
stretches over less than 1% of human existence.

The way socialism comes about will be uniquely determined by its 
prehistory, but as a society consciously regulated by its members, it will 
be a reversion to a more balanced, less cancerous, pattern of human existence.

The whole debate about the origins of capitalism I suggest has forced 
everyone to consider that there may often be a mixture of coexisting 
relations of production in a society, but one is usually hegemonic.

A more 'natural' course of history would be a more slowly accumulating 
complexity of the means of production in a society capable of expanding its 
surplus more slowly. Again compare China, which had considerable 
technological developments, and there is no reason to think they would have 
stopped.

Note that Schweickart in Against Capitalism, accepts that under market 
socialism economic growth will recede in importance.

But is the smoothest course of history the most 'natural' one? Perhaps the 
struggle of contradictions is inseparable from change and development.

That at any rate, would be my response.

Chris Burford

London

Disillusioned Thais

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, June 26, 2001 

Their Financial Crisis Past, Thais Remain Disillusioned

By MARK LANDLER

BANGKOK - Nearly four years after it devalued its currency, unleashing an
economic typhoon across Asia, Thailand is still reeling. And while the
storm has passed, its aftereffects have proved stubbornly hard to shake,
leaving this country in chronic distress.

Thailand's banks are hobbled by bad debt; many of its biggest companies are
bankrupt; and its fragile recovery is sputtering, hurt by the economic
slump in the United States, Europe and Japan.

For many Thais, the latest setback confirms what they had suspected since
the crisis of 1997- 98 - that their country can no longer depend on the
global economy. Once the darling of the International Monetary Fund and
foreign investors, Thailand is turning inward under the weight of its
troubles.

With many neighbors in similar or worse straits, some analysts say that
Thailand's nativism could take root elsewhere in Asia. From Malaysia to
Taiwan, people are struggling to live without the export-led growth that
lifted them out of poverty in the last 20 years. Bewildered and bitter,
they are starting to question the economic policies that have been a model
for the region.

"People on the streets believe that the I.M.F.'s way of solving problems is
wrong," said Tongchat Hongladaromp, newly appointed chief executive of the
Thai Petrochemical Industry Company, the nation's largest corporate
bankruptcy. "We've got to find a solution that works for Thailand."

In its hunger for change, Thailand ousted its pro-Western prime minister in
January, replacing him with a populist billionaire, Thaksin Shinawatra. Mr.
Thaksin has charted a sharply different course, emphasizing growth at home
over exports, funneling billions of dollars to banks and farmers and
dismissing those, like the governor of the Thai central bank, with whom he
disagrees.

This go-it-alone strategy is fraught with risks, not the least of which is
a threat to the prime minister's hold on office because of a corruption
investigation.

Along with the abandonment of I.M.F.-style prescriptions has come a surge
in economic nationalism. Thailand is drafting policies to help local
products compete with imports. It has raised the fees for foreigners' work
permits. And state agencies have been prohibited from hiring non-Thais as
consultants.

This tendency toward isolationism stops short of policies in Malaysia,
where the leader, Mahathir Mohamad, inveighs against neocolonial
financiers. Thailand has not imposed controls on its capital markets, as
Malaysia did in 1998. And it remains a popular destination for foreign
direct investment and tourism, though new investment has fluctuated in
recent months because of confusion over Thai policies.

While Mr. Thaksin is unnerving some foreign investors, he has won broad
domestic support and respectful notices from a few analysts, who are
cheered that Thailand is trying something different.

"He's right to say that Thailand shouldn't rely on foreigners," said
Christopher Wood, a regional strategist at ABN Amro in Hong Kong. "It's
just plain common sense that Asia shouldn't put its bets on exports."

The I.M.F. itself has taken more of a hands-off role in the last year,
since its loan program to Thailand ended. While the lending agency is
drafting a report on Mr. Thaksin's policies, its officials are not eager to
revive the debate over how best to repair the economy.

"There isn't a particular prescription the fund has, which would or
wouldn't work," said Reza Moghadam, the I.M.F. mission chief for Thailand.
"The question is, what are the policies which will deliver sustainable
growth?"

In many ways, Thailand's next move depends on what happens to its leader.
The National Countercorruption Commission ruled in December that Mr.
Thaksin, who amassed a fortune from his telecommunications conglomerate,
concealed some of his assets when he was deputy prime minister in 1997.

A constitutional court is considering whether to uphold the ruling. If it
does, Mr. Thaksin could be banned from politics for as long as five years.
While his coalition would retain a majority in Parliament and he could
eventually return, it is doubtful a caretaker prime minister could carry
out his policies as effectively.

Even if Mr. Thaksin stays in power, he will have to deliver on a campaign
that promised something to almost everyone. The government pledged $23,000
to each of Thailand's 70,000 villages for small-scale loans.

It is also setting up a national asset management company, which will take
over many of the bad loans from banks in an overdue effort to clean up the
financial system. Previous attempts to do this failed because toothless
bankruptcy laws emboldened debtors to be recalcitrant.

Analysts worry that unless these programs are run with discipline, they
could easily devolve into corrupt bailouts. "I don't see Thaksin cracking
the heads of his friends and supporters to do what is right i

Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Michael Pugliese]

  How is the One Child Policy in the PRC working?
Michael Pugliese

- Original Message -
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 7:10 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:14007] Current implications for South Africa


>
>
> >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/22/01 03:18PM >>>
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> >
> > So the 6 billion people of the earth - what's going to happen to
> > them? Should they consent to dying off in vast numbers?
>
>
> What would *you* advise?
>
> Mark
>
> 
>
>
> CB: All 6 billion of us alive now will die within 100 years or so. If
every two people agreed to have only one offspring, that would cut it quick.
>

ESPN versus WEVD

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, June 26, 2001 

Liberal Radio Mainstay May Sell to Make Way for ESPN

By JAYSON BLAIR

The trouble began five months ago. That is when the rumors began to surface
that the venerable WEVD radio station was going to be sold and then turned
into an ESPN sports station.

Managers at WEVD (1050 AM) began drifting into mysterious meetings, and top
executives at the Walt Disney Company's ABC Radio began boasting to others
in the industry that they were going to buy the station in order to bring
ESPN Radio to New York City.

Demonstrations were planned. A Web site, www.savewevd.com, was set up for
listeners to complain and organize an attempt to block any sale of the
station. At least one WEVD talk show host expressed concerns on the air.

Talks have bogged down since then, but industry analysts view the sale as
inevitable. Meanwhile, the campaign to oppose the sale remains in full swing.

At a time of vast consolidation in the radio industry, WEVD has been an
exception. The station, founded in 1927 to promote fiercely liberal
programming, took its call letters from Eugene V. Debs, the co-founder of
the Socialist Party and a five-time presidential candidate. The station was
bought in 1931 by The Jewish Daily Forward. For decades, it was very
profitable.

But times have changed.

The association that owns the station and The Forward, now published
weekly, has seen the newspaper's circulation drop and its losses increase
to more than $2 million a year. Radio industry executives estimate that
WEVD, which is marginally profitable, could bring $80 million to $90
million in a sale, enough to keep The Forward running for at least four
more decades.

Samuel Norich, the president of the group that owns the station, the
Forward Association, did not return telephone calls to his office and home.
Timothy McCarthy, the ABC Radio executive who would most likely become the
general manager of WEVD if it were bought by Disney, did not return calls
either.

But ABC executives said that talks had indeed started and that Mr. McCarthy
envisioned using WEVD to compete against WFAN (660 AM), the CBS/Infinity
Broadcasting sports station, which brings in more advertising revenue than
any other radio station outfit in the region.

The talks have stalled in recent days, but Tony Sanders, a senior analyst
with Duncan's American Radio, sees a sale of WEVD as inevitable. He said
that because of a recent trend toward packaging advertising accounts across
groups of affiliated stations, the two best ways a station owner can
compete is to buy stations and consolidate or to sell stations to other
group owners. 

Selling WEVD would give the Forward Association a profitable escape at a
time when Disney is working hard to find ways to get ESPN Radio into New
York. But the economic realities of the radio industry do little to mollify
those who listen to and work at WEVD.

"If the goal is to use WEVD as a way to help the financial underpinnings of
The Forward, that can be done without selling the radio station," said Alan
Colmes, the liberal co-host of Fox Television's "Hannity and Colmes," who
has a weeknight talk show on WEVD. "To let go of this would be a true shame
in a marketplace where there are so few independent voices."

The station, calling itself the Voice of Labor in the 1920's and the
University of the Air in the 1930's, was best known for helping immigrants
make the transition to America with shows in Yiddish, Polish and Greek. It
later became known as the Station That Speaks Your Language.

What upsets many who work and listen to WEVD is that the station managers
are not speaking at all.

Bill Mazer is an old New York radio man with a young voice who has been on
the air since 1947 and has a morning show on WEVD. He said that the thing
that irks him the most is that management has not told employees of any
potential changes.

"The funniest thing to me is that there is the rumor that it is going to be
a sports talk station, and I am the father of sports talk in New York," Mr.
Mazer said, noting that he started a sports show on WNBC in 1964. 

Charles Zlatkin, a postal worker in Manhattan who started savewevd.com,
said, "The thing that has irritated us, the group of listeners all over the
area, is that not one person who has called, sent a letter or e-mail has
received even a postcard response, which is curious."

Mr. Zlatkin said that listeners were trying to block the sale of WEVD or
buy it themselves. His group plans a protest on Thursday afternoon in front
of the association's offices at 45 East 33rd Street.

Edward I. Koch, the former mayor, whose talk show began running on WEVD
three years ago after being canceled by WABC for low ratings, said that
WEVD seemed as much a New York landmark as City Hall.

"WEVD is an institution that goes back as far as I can remember in giving
voice to ethnic groups and giving voice to the poor," Mr. Koch said. "And
the call letters say it all - it is for the great Socialists."

Mr. Koch then 

Re: Marxism and ecology

[Michael Pugliese]

   Lee Baxandall, who edited a collection on marxism and aesthetics in the
70's, now edits a nudist magazine.
Michael Pugliese

- Original Message -
From: "Keaney Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 1:07 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:14001] Marxism and ecology


> Chris Burford wrote:
>
> Marxism is neither sentimental humanism nor sentimental naturism.
>
> =
>
> I had a hunch those Nudists for Nader were suspect.
>
> Michael K.
>

Re: Re: where is the gas coming from?

[Eugene Coyle]

Plants "in development" don't always get built.  Maybe not even half the time.
This reported number seems way out reality for what will come on line in 24
months.

Gene Coyle

Michael Perelman wrote:

> The last sentense is unnecessary.
>
> On Tue, Jun 26, 2001 at 08:52:46AM +0100, Mark Jones wrote:
> > >>HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 25, 2001--Industrial
> > Information Resources Inc. (IIR) has confirmed 1,453 new
> > power generating units in development capable of producing an
> > additional 179,946 mega-watts (MW) of new capacity for the
> > U.S., scheduled to come online over the next 24 months...<<
> >
> > This will require 8.7 Tcf increase in total US natural gas supply -- about a
> > 20% annual increase -- when
> > production is flat or declining. Where is the natural gas coming from?
> > Perhaps Doug needs to ask his 'experts' one more time.
> >
> > Mark Jones
> >
>
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: dot.org socialists REFORMATTED

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times Op-Ed, June 26, 2001 

Serfs on the Web

By WALT CROWLEY

SEATTLE - But how do you make any money?" This is the automatic response of
virtually everyone upon learning that I run a nonprofit Web site - a
dot-org - devoted to local history.

The question is usually posed in quizzical but sympathetic tones, as if
addressed to someone who poses a potential danger to himself, if not
others. "We make money the old- fashioned way," I reply. "We beg for it."
This satisfies no one, but it's the truth.

Things have not improved since the dot-com meltdown. People assume anyone
left on the Internet has gone from riches to rags and been reduced to
selling off vintage pinball machines to pay the mortgage. But those of us
in the domain of the dot- orgs, the gentle realm of "venture socialists"
who measure success in community service and usefulness, haven't
experienced that change of fortune.

Dot-orgdom was the first civilian settlement in cyberspace after its
invention by the military-industrial-academic complex. The dot-coms arrived
later, building a tangled Web of virtual strip malls. Now their skydiving
fortunes threaten to take the Web, or at least its credibility, with them.
Fortunately, there is a safety net (sorry): the dot-orgs, dot-govs, and
dot-edus that happily provide free data without having to post losses on
the Nasdaq.

But just as many venture capitalists have discovered that the same basic
economic rules apply in cyberspace as in the real world, so it is with
public service. I have learned this the hard way in developing
HistoryLink.org, a community history site for the Pacific Northwest written
for the Internet, offering the electronic equivalent of 12,000 printed pages.

This project is not an inexpensive undertaking, when you take the radical
step of paying historians, writers, designers and editors a living wage
instead of stock options. At first, I naïvely assumed that this resource
would appeal to local sponsors motivated by community pride. 

I soon discovered that globalization had severed ties many corporations had
to their local communities. Most traditional foundations also proved
skeptical, if not openly suspicious, of the Internet, while younger
cyber-riche philanthropists were already bored with it.

The project would have died early but for local governments and a few
progressive donors who recognized its value in promoting history education
and citizen debate. Still, fund- raising remains a daily struggle, and in
this, a dot-org is no different from any other nonprofit group. Practicing
venture socialism may not make you rich, but it's more honest than a lot of
defunct dot-com business plans.

(Walt Crowley writes frequently on Pacific Northwest history and is the
author of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's guide to Seattle.) 


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

dot.org socialists

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times Op-Ed, June 26, 2001 

Serfs on the Web

By WALT CROWLEY

SEATTLE - But how do you make any money?" This is the automatic
response of virtually everyone upon learning that I run a nonprofit Web site
- a dot-org - devoted to local history.

The question is usually posed in quizzical but sympathetic tones, as if
addressed to
someone who poses a potential danger to himself, if not others. "We make money
the old- fashioned way," I reply. "We beg for it." This satisfies no one,
but it's the
truth.

Things have not improved since the dot-com meltdown. People assume anyone left
on the Internet has gone from riches to rags and been reduced to selling
off vintage
pinball machines to pay the mortgage. But those of us in the domain of the
dot- orgs,
the gentle realm of "venture socialists" who measure success in community
service
and usefulness, haven't experienced that change of fortune.

Dot-orgdom was the first civilian settlement in cyberspace after its
invention by the
military-industrial-academic complex. The dot-coms arrived later, building
a tangled
Web of virtual strip malls. Now their skydiving fortunes threaten to take
the Web, or
at least its credibility, with them. Fortunately, there is a safety net
(sorry): the
dot-orgs, dot-govs, and dot-edus that happily provide free data without
having to
post losses on the Nasdaq.

But just as many venture capitalists have discovered that the same basic
economic
rules apply in cyberspace as in the real world, so it is with public
service. I have
learned this the hard way in developing HistoryLink.org, a community
history site for
the Pacific Northwest written for the Internet, offering the electronic
equivalent of
12,000 printed pages.

This project is not an inexpensive undertaking, when you take the radical
step of
paying historians, writers, designers and editors a living wage instead of
stock
options. At first, I naïvely assumed that this resource would appeal to
local sponsors
motivated by community pride. 

I soon discovered that globalization had severed ties many corporations had
to their
local communities. Most traditional foundations also proved skeptical, if
not openly
suspicious, of the Internet, while younger cyber-riche philanthropists were
already
bored with it.

The project would have died early but for local governments and a few
progressive
donors who recognized its value in promoting history education and citizen
debate.
Still, fund-raising remains a daily struggle, and in this, a dot-org is no
different from
any other nonprofit group. Practicing venture socialism may not make you
rich, but
it's more honest than a lot of defunct dot-com business plans.

(Walt Crowley writes frequently on Pacific Northwest history and is the author
of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's guide to Seattle.)


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

RE: Re: where is the gas coming from?

[Mark Jones]

Michael Perelman:
>
>
> The last sentense is unnecessary.
>

On the contrary, I'd be interested to know whether the industry people Doug
consulted before can explain where the extra naturral gas is coming from;
no-one else seems to know, including the US DoE. I assume silence means that
they don't know either.

 Mark Jones

SS and Women

[Ian Murray]

Published on Tuesday, June 26, 2001 in Newsday
Bush Puts Biggest Women's Issue Ever On the Table
by Marie Cocco

LISTEN to your mother.
Did she complain last winter about heating bills making it tough to
get through the month? Has she cut back on getting her hair cut? Has
she stopped slipping a dollar or two into the birthday cards for the
grandkids? Listen to Mom. And then maybe you will listen more
carefully to the Bush administration's commission to privatize Social
Security.

The president has put on the table the biggest women's issue of all.
It touches more women than abortion or contraception. It matters as
much as equal pay for equal work. It is as important-more so-to women
who stay at home to care for children than to those who shuttle off to
work each day.

The government's biggest program for women isn't low-interest loans
for female entrepreneurs or research into breast cancer. It's Social
Security.

Turning it into a system relying on individual bank accounts for
benefits has far more consequence for women than for men.

"Her account, just based on the facts, folks, is going to be smaller
than his," said Deb Briceland-Betts, director of the Older Women's
League, which opposes privatization.

Because women earn less than men-even when they work full-time-they
will have less to put into a private account. Because women take years
off to care for children, they will have fewer years to build up a
balance. Because women are more likely to work part-time, they will
have less to deposit in the first place.

The current system tries, in some ways, to make up for all this. And
private accounts? Who can say? Nobody from the Bush administration has
even tried to explain.

Right now, survivors of a wage-earner who dies before retirement get a
lifetime, inflation-adjusted benefit every month for themselves and
any children under 18. Women who never worked outside the home, and
those who have taken years off work to care for children or other
relatives, get a lifetime, inflation-adjusted retirement benefit based
on a husband's earnings. Women or men who are divorced after 10 years
of marriage can claim Social Security spousal benefits-even if their
former spouse remarries.

And even with this protection, elderly women are still more likely
than elderly men to be poor. We live longer. And we have less to live
on. Once a woman reaches 75, the likelihood she will live in poverty
is about double that of a man.

"Most women end up widowed, even if they don't start retirement that
way," said Virginia Reno, vice president for research at the National
Academy for Social Insurance.

By the time a woman is in her 70s, let alone her 80s, life has a way
of sending her into economic straits. Widowhood brings an automatic
drop in monthly Social Security benefits. A private pension that may
have gone only to a husband ends. The value of any remaining pension
that is not inflation-adjusted-and few are-has eroded seriously. The
bank account already has dwindled.

"Whoever outlives the other has coped with the cost of a final
illness, which depletes assets," said Reno.

You have not heard any of this from the Bush White House. What you
have heard is how Social Security is going broke (not quite true) and
even, according to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, that it has "no
assets" (though as a Social Security trustee, O'Neill just signed a
report on the fund's Treasury bond holdings and continued growth in
its surplus).

You have heard that the only way to "rescue" this faltering system is
to take money out of it-that is, to allow workers to divert some of
their payroll taxes into private accounts. You have heard these
accounts will grow, year after year after year, as markets magically
transform them into "wealth." You have heard so very much about
accumulation. And nothing at all about the payout.

Will it be a lump sum or an annuity doled out over time? Will husbands
be required to share accounts with wives? In a divorce, will this
account formerly known as a lifetime Social Security benefit be just
another asset to be fought over and may the best lawyer win? Can one
spouse bequeath the account to someone other than a surviving
spouse -say, a favorite nephew or the local animal shelter? Will women
be shielded from inflation into their 80s and 90s? Listen for the
answers. Then run them by Mom. Chances are she won't think this is
such a great deal.

Re: Re: Fw:[ASDnet] Abundance (was Naderism)

[Michael Pugliese]

> Of course. The Sierra Club nearly came out in favor of a ban on
immigration.
>
www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=Political+Ecology+Group+Sierra+Clu
b+immigration&spell=1

http://www.igc.org/peg/imm_env/sierra_b.html
http://www.igc.org/peg/imm_env/expose.html
Wooing the Sierra Club:
Anti-Immigration Groups Make Unlikely Suitors
http://www.igc.org/peg/imm_env/links.html

Re: Puzzle of the day

[Nathan Newman]

I'm curious what your definition of having a difficult time in the labor
market means?  Nursing unions have had some success in recent years - more
than most industries - and I believe nurses salaries have been increasing,
even if they lag what their professional status no doubt deserves.

Curious what you are noting here?

Nathan Newman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.nathannewman.org
- Original Message -
From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 11:51 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:14011] Puzzle of the day


Nurses are highly trained and in very short supply.  Why is it then that
nurses are having such a difficult time in the labor market, especially
with regard to working conditions.  The recent Supreme Court decision will
undoubtedly make things worse, but my question concerns with the nurses'
situation says about the current labor market.
 --
Michael Perelman
Economics Department California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Puzzle of the day

[Michael Perelman]

Nurses are highly trained and in very short supply.  Why is it then that
nurses are having such a difficult time in the labor market, especially
with regard to working conditions.  The recent Supreme Court decision will
undoubtedly make things worse, but my question concerns with the nurses'
situation says about the current labor market.
 -- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: Fw:[ASDnet] Abundance (was Naderism)

[Louis Proyect]

>More seriously, in raising the very genuine problem of the loss of an 
>idea of utopian, egalitarian abundance as a fundamental political 
>problem for the left, in the part quoted, Lemisch does not address the 
>equally real problem of severely dystopian dimensions to "actually 
>existing abundance."  

Exactly.

>Cars mean mobility, Lemisch says.  Cars also, at present, mean dispersed 
>settlement.  Such settlement creates MATERIAL (not aesthetic) 
>sustainability issues, as does the mass agriculture Lemisch also vaunts. 
> Further, ex-urban development causes loss of farm land for any type of 
>agriculture, mass or not.

Exactly.

>Meanwhile the upper-class negotiations for "new urbanist" urban renewal 
>(it's baaack) usually involve details of the mix of mixed-use, 
>ineffective gestures to moderate income housing (never mind low income, 
>too many poor people around by definition means "not revitalized"), and 
>destruction of low income housing & community displacement (too often 
>once again "Negro removal," now extended to new immigrant communities as 
>well).  

Of course. The Sierra Club nearly came out in favor of a ban on immigration.

>Some of the "new urbanism" is Naderite, but lots of it is social 
>democratic negotiation with sectors of real estate, commercial and 
>finance capital.  And it can have the same ugly class undertones as the 
>patrician side of Naderism.  

In other words, the coal miners union has just backed George W. Bush's
stand against the Kyoto protocols. Nader, the AFL-CIO bureaucracy that
social democrats orient to, et al, refuse to look at the underlying
economic causes of underemployment, unemployment and environmental
despoliation. By pitting one goal against the other, they provide wiggle
room for the bosses. That is why a class-based ecosocialist movement is
necessary. Against the green capitalism of Paul Hawken, an ardent Nader
backer, and the AFL-CIO "brown Keynesian" pact with the corporate devil, we
need an alternative.

>And yet I still hate it that in a few minutes I am going to go get on a 
>bus that makes me take 40 minutes and a transfer at the apex of two 
>sides of a triangle rather than a fifteen minute car trip on the third 
>side, except that the suburban growth and limited number of bridges mean 
>the rush hour car trip can get up to half an hour of stalled traffic.  
>So I may get a bike, but probably if I do I should get a gas mask for 
>riding alongside the nearly stalled cars on the Sellwood bridge.  

This is the main problem with greens. It turns into questions of personal
choice under capitalism. 

>And meanwhile, as in the Pacific Northwest we debate dam breaching to 
>prevent salmon extinction vs. power generation and barge transport of 
>grain in a context where the old railways have been torn up, due to 
>liberal quasi-social democratic planning in the New Deal and Great 
>Society, the Chinese are seeking to bring "abundance" by damning the 
>three rivers and burning coal, coal, coal.  

Things will get much, much, much worse.

>One third of Africans live in cities, their desperate poverty and the 
>labor mobility that creates the speed of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, driven 
>in part by the mass agricultural production Lemisch vaunts, surpluses of 
>which drive government "free-trade" and structural adjustment policies 
>while offering remaining family farmers prices NOMINALLY the same as 
>fifty years age.  But the real mass agriculturae is organized through 
>corporate monopolies that are creating a new share-cropping ("contract 
>farming") in KwaZulu-Natal and in Iowa.  The same monopolies are part of 
>the coalition seeking to create novel forms of "intellectual property" 
>and minimally regulated rights to monkey with genetics and to use 
>compiled biological data against us.  To say nothing of bad effects of 
>mass monoculture on soils, genetic diversity of seed lines etc.  Or what 
>a tomato tastes like.  

Excellent.

>Karl Marx saw the ultimate contradiction of capitalism as a social one, 
>that of the tendency of capitalism to polarize two great classes.  

Don't forget the "metabolic rift" betwen the soil and its nutrients,
discussed in v.3 of Capital.

>But I'm not willing just to trash Naderites.  Many of their foibles or 
>problems have "old left" counterparts.  "From each according to his 
>abilities, to each according to his needs" has its ascetic as well as 
>its cornucopian possibilities. 

People don't make revolutions to bring slogans such as "From each according
to his abilities, to each according to his needs" to fruition. They make
them because the ruling class is embarked on a maniacal campaign to destroy
working people either through war, fascism, economic depression, etc.

>
>What I want to know is, can we re-imagine abundance in a sustainable 
>way, AND persuade a large proportion of people who have one sort of 
>concept of what makes for abundance and the good life, to think about 
>quality of life in other ways.  I 

Fw:[ASDnet] Abundance (was Naderism)

[Michael Pugliese]

http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue31/cont31.htm>
Also, see the other articles on Nader, like the Howie Hawkins.
Michael Pugliese, "punk pimp" ;-)

- Original Message - 
From: "Chris Lowe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 7:35 AM
Subject: [ASDnet] Abundance (was Naderism)



Michael, 

Thank you for forwarding the quote from Jesse Lemisch.  It raises 
serious issues about which I'd like to hear a reasonable discussion.  

In particular, as a personal favor and in the spirit of cooperative 
solidarity, I would like to request that anyone else interested accept 
that I am genuinely unsettled in my mind.  My questions are genuine.  I 
am not opposing anyone.  I would appreciate not being attacked for 
imputed motives, psychological flaws or character defects, nor for not 
having made up my mind before rather than after discussion.  

Green asceticism can take four politically destructive forms visible 
here in Oregon.  Least serious is hypocrisy, or exposure to accusation 
of such, e.g. the SUVs with Nader bumper stickers that became a minor 
joke.  Another submerged small issue came out briefly in Y2K debates -- 
a sort of green/New Age survivalism often seemed incapable of 
recognizing the politics of brown/apocalyptic racist survivalism.  

More important is asceticism as a vehicle of closedness, of sectism.  
Closedness often manifests in exclusive expressive "movement cultures," 
marked by style -- e.g. aging & neo-"hippie," or anarcho-punk as style, 
or the less ascetic 
REI-eco-camper-I-won't-fall-in-the-crevasse-but-you-would aesthetic, 
(see SUVs above).  Variation partly reflects more vs. less militant 
elements and partly college Greens vs. longer term -- though it does 
seem that Greens do seem to maintain an age continuum better than most 
socialist groups.  

But the most profound problem with Green asceticism is when it embodies 
for tody the persistent tradition of conservationist patricianism.  
Remember that Robin Hood is a story about poaching on royal and 
aristocratic game reserves.  National parks are the small r republican 
extension.  

While Greens (rightly) argue against despoliation of a this common 
heritage, and the enclosure of the great remaining commons (outside of 
Africa) of air and water for private profit, they also often privilege 
certain expensive, class-bound uses of public lands over others & are 
willing to use monetary & hence class based exclusion methods to limit 
use.  This is only one example of where the right then mobilizes 
anti-Green politics around resentment of upper-middle-class Green 
contempt for conservative populist leisure & consumption preferences.  

Same thing with anti-smoking, which I am.  But I have to recognize that 
this means most of the people I'm talking about are poorer than me & 
that I am on the same side as corporate social engineers looking to 
reduce benefits obligations and impose regulation on workers' private 
behavior seen to reduce their productivity.  My concern for the health 
of smokers, unless they are my immediate friends, inevitably takes on a 
paternalist tinge.  

Moreover, the point about bikes and the disabled might be extended to 
people who need cars to get to work.  I don't mean the people who have 
chosen to try to pursue a bucolic (and partly Green aesthetic motivated) 
ex-urban existence that ironically destroys the sought-after pastoral 
world.  I mean those who have to drive because someone closed the (often 
industrial, often polluting) plant that was where parents or 
grandparents walked to work.  

All that said, Jesse Lemisch's piece as quoted so far seems 
psychologically reductive.  Psychology is important here, but it is not 
all.  (I will try to read the whole later.)

More seriously, in raising the very genuine problem of the loss of an 
idea of utopian, egalitarian abundance as a fundamental political 
problem for the left, in the part quoted, Lemisch does not address the 
equally real problem of severely dystopian dimensions to "actually 
existing abundance."  

At a rather superficial level, the phenomenon of Ralph Nader himself as 
party leader itself reflects the problem -- our abundance of media is 
organized so that only certain figures can mobilize it apart from 
brute-force payment for access.  So Nader gets coopted for his fame.  I 
am curious if he is doing more to actually build Green political 
structure than Jesse Jackson did with Rainbow Coalition.  

Yet, if we are not comfortable with the ascetic terms of "Naderism," 
what IS our picture of abundance, if it is also not simply agreeing that 
what is good for GM (SUVs) is good for America?  Assuming Lemisch means 
something else.  

Cars mean mobility, Lemisch says.  Cars also, at present, mean dispersed 
settlement.  Such settlement creates MATERIAL (not aesthetic) 
sustainability issues, as does the mass agriculture Lemisch also vaunts. 
 Further, ex-urban development causes loss of farm l

Current implications for South Africa

[Charles Brown]

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/22/01 03:18PM >>>

Doug Henwood wrote:

> 
> So the 6 billion people of the earth - what's going to happen to 
> them? Should they consent to dying off in vast numbers?


What would *you* advise? 

Mark 




CB: All 6 billion of us alive now will die within 100 years or so. If every two people 
agreed to have only one offspring, that would cut it quick.

Capitalism as an accident and freak of nature

[Charles Brown]

Carrol Cox:

>Characteristically, in a slave system, the overseer,
> master, would tell the slaves: collate those newsletters. Period! 
> This is incidentally key to what Yoshie and I and others are currently
> battling out with Mark and Lou. Capitalism is _different_; it is very
> near to _unnatural_, a freak, an accident which very well might not ever
> appear were the tape of human history (using Gould's metaphor) to be run
> over again.

(

CB: So, will socialism be an accident an freak of nature ?  What was the natural 
course of history , had the freak accident not occurred causing capitalism ?

Re: Red Flags and Red Roses

[LeoCasey]

Jim Devine wrote: << checking out the British Labour Party on the web, they 
seem to have dropped the red flag as their symbol (replacing it with a red 
rose -- with thorns?) but not the red flag anthem. >>

Michael Keaney wrote: << This change occurred under Neil Kinnock's 
leadership, c. 1985. There was a minor stir at the time concerning this 
obvious "softening" of Labour's proletarianish image, as, at the following 
Conservative Party conference Thatcher mocked the new symbol, proclaiming 
her identification with the "rose of England". >>

Long before 1985, the Socialist International had adopted the 'red rose' in 
the hand as its symbol. I am not sure how far it goes back, but I have seen 
it in late 1960s/early 1970s contexts. All that the Labour Party was doing 
was using the symbol of the International. In 1982, when DSA was formed, we 
had some discussion of this symbol, and adopted a symbol of black and white 
hands clasped with the red rose as an alternative.

.

Re: The enemies deep within (part 1)

[Louis Proyect]

Michael Keany wrote:
>THE ENEMIES DEEP WITHIN
>
>A 3-part review of David Leigh, "The Wilson Plot: The Intelligence Services
>and the Discrediting of a Prime Minister 1945-1976", London: Heinemann, 1988
>
>PART ONE
>
>Contrary to the classical liberal myth of the separate spheres of state and
>civil society, Marxian and other radical (and even not so radical) critics
>of capitalism have noted their interpenetration. Marxists in particular have
>devoted vast amounts of time and intellectual energy to the study of the
>capitalist state.

Very, very interesting. For another perspective on this, I can't recommend
Robert Lindsey's "The Falcon and the Snowman : A True Story of Friendship
and Espionage" highly enough. This is the story of Christopher Boyce, the
son of a FBI agent who goes to work for TRW shortly after the end of the
Vietnam war. Because of his impeccable family connections (ha-ha!), they
put him into the most secure area, involved with decoding top-secret
messages that track US destabilization efforts overseas. To Boyce's great
dismay, he discovers that the CIA worked to topple Labor Prime Minister
Gough Whitlam in Australia.

Boyce teamed up with high school buddy Daulton Lee, a petty drug dealer and
addict, to sell TRW top-secret data to the Soviet Union which they did for
a couple of years before getting caught. After Boyce was sent to prison, he
made a daring escape and found his way to the Pacific Northwest where he
joined a bank-robbing gang run by Gloria Ann White, a latter-day Belle
Starr, who lived on Katka Mountain in a huge log cabin where outlaws were
always welcome to lie low. In a follow-up book on Boyce's flight (The
Flight of the Falcon), Lindsey wrote "In many ways, she was a woman who
belonged more to the nineteenth century than to the twentieth. 'She spurned
electricity, indoor plumbing and most other conveniences of the twentieth
century, with the exception of her pickup truck.'' 

Unfortunately, "The Falcon and the Snowman" is out of print but well worth
borrowing from any well-stocked library. You can also see a movie based on
the book with Timothy Hutton as Boyce and Sean Penn in a memorable
performance as Dauton Lee.


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

The enemies deep within (part 1)

[Keaney Michael]

THE ENEMIES DEEP WITHIN

A 3-part review of David Leigh, "The Wilson Plot: The Intelligence Services
and the Discrediting of a Prime Minister 1945-1976", London: Heinemann, 1988

PART ONE

Contrary to the classical liberal myth of the separate spheres of state and
civil society, Marxian and other radical (and even not so radical) critics
of capitalism have noted their interpenetration. Marxists in particular have
devoted vast amounts of time and intellectual energy to the study of the
capitalist state. Normally this concerns the state's roles and the
facilitator and legitimator of the accumulation process, taking its cue from
Marx's famous line concerning the state as the executive committee of the
bourgeoisie. Of course the state is rather more than that, and Marx himself
had rather more to say about the state than simply leave it there. As Clyde
W. Barrow notes in his useful 1993 study, "Critical Theories of the State:
Marxist, Neo-Marxist, Post-Marxist" (University of Wisconsin Press), Marx
left behind a number of comments and observations on the capitalist state,
each of which have spawned parallel sub-traditions of inquiry within the
Marxist canon. Add to that the muckraking of sympathetic radicals like
Thorstein Veblen, C. Wright Mills and G. William Domhoff and it is no wonder
that the radical critique of the state is so varied. A valuable aspect of
Barrow's work, echoed in recent discussions on PEN-L, is that he treats
these differing approaches as complementary, rather than mutually exclusive
absolutes.

Another state theorist who takes a slightly different tack from those above
is Martin Shaw, a sociologist in origin who has developed a suitably
sociological take on the emerging "global state", taking as of central
importance the state's monopoly on violence. In his most recent book, for
example, he claims that we neglect the legacy of Carl von Clausewitz at our
peril ("Theory of the Global State: Globality as an Unfinished Revolution",
Cambridge UP, 2000). It's a useful reminder of the violence that attends
state formation and state preservation, as with defence against external and
internal enemies. In states with a legacy of empire, as in Britain and
France, and, in more recent times, the United States, experience gained in
subduing the natives during colonisation and quelling local uprisings and
struggles for independence forges institutions and personal relationships
that eventually find their way back to the domestic front. This is not to
say that, prior to empire, home was free of repression. "Britain" has a long
history of ruthless subjugation of unruly types, be they Celts, Catholics,
Royalists, puritans, factory workers, miners or Irish republicans. France
shares with Britain an institutionalised anti-Communism that so dreaded the
red menace that its ruling class was largely content to capitulate to Hitler
(look at the composition of the Vichy government - largely the generals
responsible for the "defence" of France against Nazi Germany). And the
United States, of course, can boast of J. Edgar Hoover, and a long pedigree
of "red" hunting, viz. the extermination of the Indian population (see Joel
Kovel, "Red Hunting in the Promised Land", London: Cassell, 1993).

Nevertheless the experience of overseas jaunts and foreign adventures comes,
in time, to inform domestic "intelligence", as the techniques formulated and
practised abroad are applied at home. Such is the case with the British
secret state, a direct result of the war effort against Nazi Germany and
concurrent insurrection in Palestine. All of which is given a remarkably
detailed telling in David Leigh's 13-year-old book which, despite the
occasional reminder in the media - including a Channel 4 documentary
broadcast in 1996 - has made little impact of any significance. Why?

Firstly, serious discussion of the secret state is difficult because it is
secret. Its very secrecy is a licence to speculate, and it's not far from
speculation to conspiracy. Before long, you join some fairly unpleasant
company like Lyndon LaRouche and David Icke, whom most people rightly regard
as a few sandwiches short of a picnic. However, the charge of
conspiratorialism serves to discredit those, like Leigh, who do their best
to dig up the appropriate documentary evidence. Despite being able to piece
together events and produce a corresponding paper trail, Leigh and others
like him remain tarred by the "conspiracy" brush. Then there is the use to
which Leigh and other critical investigators are put by the intelligence
services themselves, as they provide snippets of information and
disinformation, half-truths and tidbits, in the effort to lead their
would-be scrutineers down blind alleys - and preferably long ones.

Secondly, of course, is the monumentally disgraceful effort by the organs
and personnel of state to cover up absolutely everything not deemed
desirable to be known. Even today the newly "open" and "accountable" MI5
denies all allegations con

Lock Down

[Keaney Michael]

Penners

Some time ago Jim Devine queried the election of the independent MP, Richard
Taylor, a doctor opposed to the closure of all acute services at the local
Kidderminster Hospital. The best, succinct explanation is provided by
Private Eye magazine, whose article follows. It tracks the fall of the
erstwhile New Labour MP, David Lock, whose actions embody many of the
problems posed by New Labour in its assumption of the role of natural party
of government/divine right.

The academic whom Lock locks horns with is Allyson Pollock, someone whose
critical work on the private finance initiative I have had good opportunity
to use in my own studies of the topic. It is sound, in that it attacks PFI
at the very heart of its justification as "best value" for taxpayers' money.
No wonder, then, that she has been singled out as a rogue academic not
dancing to the tunes played by the many former academics/educationalists now
ensconced in government and subjecting their former colleagues to the sorts
of treatment they themselves once bewailed.

The ex-MP concerned follows a trajectory parallel to that of former Culture
Secretary Chris Smith, who, prior to New Labour's election victory in 1997
was its Shadow Health Secretary. In that position he opposed Conservative
administered cuts in hospital provision in London, and promised to reverse
such decisions upon taking office should Labour win the election. Victory
brought his prompt sideways move to Culture, enabling Frank Dobson to
oversee the continuation of the private finance initiative (PFI) in its new,
more friendly guise as Public Private Partnerships (PPP). It was his support
(more than a little forced) for this, of course, that cost him the London
mayoral election against Ken Livingstone. Lock, however, seems to have
bitten the bullet that Smith dodged, and has duly paid the price.

Also mentioned below is a veteran of the Thatcher years, Lord (David) Young
of Graffham, ex-"minister for enterprise" and general busybody who ended up
falling out with Norman Tebbit over how to run the Tories' 1987 general
election campaign. Young's brother, Stuart, was chairman of the BBC board of
governors at the time of all the controversy surrounding critical BBC
documentaries and plays, leading, of course, to the ejection of Director
General Alasdair Milne. On leaving government Young ended up as Chairman of
Cable and Wireless.

Private Eye itself, of course, is no stranger to controversy, as, in a
former incarnation, it played an important role in the Wilson Plot
orchestrated by MI5 and the CIA against Harold Wilson. More about that to
follow. Meanwhile...

=

Private Eye, 15-28 June, 2001 (No. 1030)

The best election result by far was at Wyre Forest, where the ambitious
junior minister at the lord chancellor's department, barrister David Lock
(10,857 votes) was hammered out of sight by the Health Concern candidate,
Richard Taylor (28,487 votes).

The Eye was one of the first to appreciate the challenge from Health
Concern. Under the heading "Wyres Crossed" way back in June last year, we
traced the circuitous record of David Lock over the key local issue of the
proposed closure of all acute services at Kidderminster (Eye 1007). Lock was
against the proposals when he stood for the seat and won it unexpectedly in
1997. But his enthusiasm for the campaign against closure waned as he
climbed into the government.

His ire was directed against those who opposed plans for the new hospital,
especially Professor Allyson Pollock of the University College of London's
school of public policy. Mr Lock complained not to Prof Pollock herself but
to the chairman of the University College council, Lord Young of Graffham.

The Eye article drew a mocking reply from the MP who proclaimed himself a
regular Eye reader and bitterly attacked Prof Pollock who, he wrote, "didn't
bother to check her facts with the health authority before going to print".
This letter drew a furious and devastating response from Richard Taylor, a
retired consultant, whose letter (Eye 1007) exposed Mr Lock as, well, having
been economical with the truth.

This was followed the following issue (1008) by a letter from Allyson
Pollock pointing out that her facts about the hospital were quite correct.
The cost of the new PFI facility at Worcester replacing the services at
Kidderminster had risen from £49m to £108m, and all to provide 44 percent
fewer acute beds for more patients.

So besieged was Mr Lock by the campaigners for the hospital that he resorted
to his lawyers. Eye 1023 reported that he had threatened to sue Frank
Baillie, a vice-chairman of Health Concern, for telling the left-wing weekly
Tribune that Lock "had gone for promotion instead of standing side by side
with the people of Wyre Forest". Lawyers for the local authority (where
Health Concern was and is the largest party) told Mr Baillie that they would
not meet the costs of a libel action, and Baillie was forced to issue a
grovelling and humiliating apol

Marxism and ecology

[Keaney Michael]

Chris Burford wrote:

Marxism is neither sentimental humanism nor sentimental naturism.

=

I had a hunch those Nudists for Nader were suspect.

Michael K.

red flags

[Keaney Michael]

Jim Devine wrote:

checking out the British Labour Party on the web, they seem to have dropped 
the red flag as their symbol (replacing it with a red rose -- with thorns?) 
but not the red flag anthem.

=

This change occurred under Neil Kinnock's leadership, c. 1985. There was a
minor stir at the time concerning this obvious "softening" of Labour's
proletarianish image, as, at the following Conservative Party conference
Thatcher mocked the new symbol, proclaiming her identification with the
"rose of England". TV cameras caught Secretary of State for Scotland George
Younger applauding her at this point, prompting Scottish tabloids and
columnists to fits of apoplexy concerning the true interests of a supposed
defender of "Scottish" interests identifying with the rose of England, etc.
Such was the devastating effect of Thatcherite economic policies on the
Scottish economy that the Scottish Office team was quite embattled, forcing
unpopular policies upon an electorate that had quite clearly rejected the
prescription. To make up for this Younger projected an image of battling for
Scotland in the Cabinet, in a quasi-nationalist pose. No worries, however.
Younger was a Thatcher loyalist to the very end, managing her unsuccessful
Tory leadership campaign against Michael Heseltine in 1990 and resigning his
Cabinet post as Defence Secretary thereafter to go into business, primarily
as chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Michael K.