Re: H-B: REV: Katzman on Dore _Stock Market Capitalism

[Charles Jannuzi]

It's a nice review and it looks to be a book well worth reading.

About the following point:

>>Dore often numbers the points of his discussion.  For example, "On the
third of the four features which mark Japanese economic structure and
behaviour off from the classical Anglo-Saxon model-a greater tilt
towards cooperation in the competition/cooperation balance among market
competitors" (p. 143).<<

This cooperation in competition element gets misunderstood in the West. The
associations are often set up to self-police and assure competition, I
think. There could be some collusion and price-fixing in some products, but
it actually seems to allow more producers into a market. Afterall, it's in
'competitive' America where you end up with completely uncompetitive
situations like MS and Intel dominating the desktop and notebook pc market.

This is also where American companies misjudge entering the Japanese market.
They underestimate just how competitive it is. Kodak underestimated how hard
it would be to equal Fuji on their home turf, but it was also because they
failed to compete with Konica when they entered the Japanese market. German
AGF did well by becoming a supplier to generic film marketers, like Daiei.


The only way foreign companies can compete in automobiles is by using their
large stock valuations and ability to leverage takeovers to take over
Japanese companies. Ford-Mazda. GM-Suzuki and Isuzu (and GM has significant
capital tie ups with Subaru/Fuji Heavy Industry as well). Renault-Nissan.
And Daimler-Chrysler-Mitsubishi.

Coke largely created the market here for sugary softdrinks and still
dominates, though Suntory tied up with Pepsi to compete.

McDonald's largely created fastfood eating here, and used price cutting to
drive most others out of business (regrettable because now all you find are
McD's everywhere).

Charles Jannuzi

RE: RE: Bureaucracy

[michael pugliese]

Jim>...Under the Soviet system, the ruling stratum was bureaucratic:
the leadership 
of the Communist Party ruled their party in a top-down way, while
that Party 
held a monopoly of political power. (State force was mobilized
to suppress 
or buy off any opposition.) That is, the Party "owned" the state,
which in 
turn officially owned the means of production and controlled
the economy (to 
the extent that the planning process worked), i.e., they had
more control 
than anyone else did over the process of the production and utilization
of 
surplus-labor and the accumulation of fixed means of production...

   Whoa there Jim, you're sounding like Max Shactman in, "The
Bureaucratic Revolution, " published 1962, the yr. after the
Bay of Pigs invasion 'ol Max S. supported because trade unionists
were part of the invasion force.
These Revisionist Tendencies Of Yours Must Be Held In Check Or
Is That Cheka?
Comrade Karl Kautsky aka Pugliese

  The "Renegade" Kautsky and his Disciple Lenin
... If we apply to Kautsky and Lenin the opposite treatment to
that which they subjected
Marx to, if we link their ideas to the class struggle instead
of ...
http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/barrotk.htm
 
>--- Original Message ---
>From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED] '" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: 4/3/02 8:23:04 PM
>

>CB:>Isn't "bureaucracy" a Weberian and not Marxist concept ?
... <

the issue is not whether it's a "marxist" concept in the sense
of whether
marx talked about it as much as whether it fits with marx's materialist
conception of history. but see, for example, hal draper's book
karl marx's
theory of revolution (several volumes, monthly review press),
especially
volume i. marx talked a lot about bureaucracy. for example, in
capital, he
talks about how bureaucrats (hired managers) were doing more
and more of the
work that capitalists took credit for doing. btw, marx was quite
familiar
with a quasi-weberian view of the state bureaucracy, that of
hegel.

weber & marx have different theories of bureaucracy. weber was
pro-bureaucracy, seeing hierarchies of this sort as an efficient
and
"rational" way of attaining goals. (my late friend al szymanski
(sp.?) once
embraced this view, arguing for his version of "leninism" by
saying that a
top-down (bureaucratic) organization was the most efficient way
to organize
a revolution. if corporations use hierarchy, why can't we?) 

draper quotes marx again and again as being anti-bureaucracy
(and in favor
of democracy, as with the paris commune) or at least as having
a more
realistic vision of bureaucracy than weber.  

>...When a "giant bureaucracy" is mentioned, I get this picture
of an
>enormous collection of people sitting at desks in office buildings.
>HOWEVER, it is not this bureau-proletariat of secretaries, clerks,
>mailboys, receptionists, beancounters, etc. that is the "cratic",
the
>power in either Russia or the New Deal, or any government. This
mass of
>deskclerks is not the cause of "redtape" or anti-democratic
rule from
>above, as if they took a vote among the vast bureaucracy to
exercise its
>power on major questions before whatever institution with whatever
>bureaucracy. "Bureaucracy" is a very misleading concept that
is rife in
>liberal political analysis.<

the thing about bureaucracy is that the power of any individual
rises as you
go up the hierarchy (though that power is hardly absolute, since
people down
below can often block the effectiveness of the organization --that's
one of
the things that "red tape" is about). the difference between
the top
bureaucrats and the petty bureaucrats is a little like the difference
between the grand and petty bourgeoisie. (unlike weber, i see
a bureaucracy
as involving a lot of competition.)

usually these days, however, the bureaucracy is only a means
to an end: the
corporate owners use it to try to attain maximum profits by organizing
production, marketing, etc. the state bureaucracy is similarly
a tool of the
state elite, which under capitalism by and large serves the preservation
of
the system. 

getting beyond capitalism, there are lots of cases where the
bureaucracy
could be seen as a ruling class of some sort. the pharoah couldn't
rule
ancient egypt without relying on the bureaucracy, so the latter
got a lot of
the power. in pre-modern china, the bureaucracy was clearly a
powerful and
self-perpetuating stratum, bringing in only those who could pass
the
calligraphy test (and the like) to run the show. in pre-revolutionary
(and
in many ways, pre-capitalist) russia, the upper bureaucrats had
noble titles
and quite a bit of power, often combining "feudal" power with
a piece of
state power.

under the soviet system, the ruling stratum was bureaucratic:
the leadership
of the communist party ruled their party in a top-down way, while
that party
held a monopoly of political power. (state force was mobilized
to suppress
or buy off any opposition.) that is, the party "owned" the state,
which in
turn o

RE: Bureaucracy...and Al Szymanski

[michael pugliese]

   Jim>...(my late friend al szymanski (sp.?)
   Nope, you got it right. He was one of the editors of the journal,
The Insurgent Sociologist now called Critical Sociology. Another
friend, wrote the below.
   (After another google hit...)
Michael Pugliese, the creepy one;-)

logical errors of leninist fundamentalism
... in this day and age*!" As did Ted Goertzel, who on Tue, 14
Dec ... Leninist doctrines
of the late great Al Szymanski or our own Comrade Berch Berberoglu
...
http://www.stile.lut.ac.uk/~gyedb/STILE/Email0002101/m15.html


Albert Szymanski: A Personal and Political Memoir
by Ted Goertzel

Versions of this essay appeared as "Albert Szymanski: A Personal
and Political Memoir," Critical Sociology, 15: 139-144 (Fall,
1988) and in my 1992 book Turncoats and True Believers.

   The 1969 meetings of the American Sociological Association
were held in the sterile towers of the San Francisco Hilton.
The meetings were particularly incongruous at the climax of the
social upheavals of the sixties. While blacks rioted in the streets
and students bombed draft boards, the sociologists hid in their
dummy variables and multiple dimensions, speculating about the
functions of conflict and the need for values to maintain the
social equilibrium. Colorless men in business suits read bland
papers full of theoretical frippery and statistical fastidiousness.
Al Szymanski was an oasis of genuineness in this desert of scholasticism.
He dressed casually in faded jeans and a work shirt, with a disheveled
mop of dishwater blond hair topping his large round head. He
was only a few months older than me, having been born in 1941.
At 6'2" and 190 pounds he was the largest of a small group of
radicals who stood quietly in the back of a meeting room holding
up a sign saying "bull shit" whenever the speaker made a particularly
galling remark. The shy grin on his cherubic face revealed his
embarrassment with this tactic, which he had agreed to as an
experiment in ethnomethodology.
Al quickly recruited me into the sociology radical caucus,
which gave me a support group of other young professors to replace
the political groups I had belonged to as a student. We were
committed to direct action and had little patience with the stuffy
professionalism of academic sociology. We had missed the deadline
to place a resolution condemning American involvement in Vietnam
on the agenda for the business meeting. Courtesy resolutions,
on occasions such as the death of a colleague, could be introduced
at any time, however. Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese leader,
had died during the meetings. We felt that he was our colleague
and sought to extend the courtesy to him. When our parliamentary
maneuver failed we simply marched to the front of the room and
held our ceremony anyway. The officials wisely retreated to resume
their deliberations in another room, allowing our action to fizzle
out gracefully.
Al was the son of a Polish-American Rhode Island lobster
fisherman who loved to work with his hands and never really understood
his son's intellectual and political inclinations. It was his
strong- minded, deeply religious, Italian-American mother who
nurtured his precociousness, taking him to get his first library
card as soon as he became eligible on his sixth birthday. When
he first entered school, she told him that "other children could
be cruel to another child who was different because of color
or how he dressed and if he saw anyone alone or rejected to become
a friend to them."
Al read Freud and Marx at the University of Rhode Island
and tried to shock his mother first with the revelation that
he had loved her unconsciously as a child, then with his discovery
of Marxism.  She professed to be flattered by the first revelation,
and did her best to understand the second. She believed he was
true to the fundamental values she had taught him, and defended
his right to political views she did not share.
Al became involved in a group called Students for Democratic
Affairs in 1963, writing a letter to the Providence Journal advocating
that students be allowed to visit Cuba. He argued that students
might return finding that Castro was not as bad as they had been
told, or they might return as staunch anti-communists. In any
event, they would be better off with first hand knowledge instead
of repeating sterile clichés composed by people who had never
left the state of Rhode Island.
On April 14, 1963 he organized an appearance by Hyman Lumer
of the Communist Party on the Rhode Island campus. He thought
that the communist system was a "tremendously important ideology
in the world today." The Worker quoted him as stating that "if,
after eighteen years of being schooled in the American way, two
hours of listening to Dr. Lumer could change a student's political
views, something would indeed be wrong with our system."
Al abandoned physics for sociology as an undergraduate major,
and went on to do a doctorate at Columbia University, where

RE: RE: Bureaucracy

[Vikash Yadav]

1. Why is Weber constantly contrasted to Marx?  The whole discussion
of bureaucracy in Weber is an extension of Marx to the degree that the
evolution of bureaucracy reflects a gradual transfer of the "means of
administration" from the individual to the state.  Much of Weber's
writing should be seen as a response and an extension of the
reductionist aspects of Marx.

2. Weber was not "pro-bureaucracy" as Jim states.  This is a poor
reading of Weber.  After all, Weber is the man who cites Goethe at the
end of the Iron Cage passage in Protestant Ethic to the effect,
"Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity
imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before
achieved."  Was Weber impressed by bureaucratic and hierocratic forms
of social organization?  Yes.  Was Weber "pro-bureaucracy"?  Hardly -
he was horrified by all forms of social (and economic) organization
that were dehumanizing.

Vikash Yadav

RE: Bureaucracy

[Devine, James]

CB:>Isn't "bureaucracy" a Weberian and not Marxist concept ? ... <

The issue is not whether it's a "Marxist" concept in the sense of whether
Marx talked about it as much as whether it fits with Marx's materialist
conception of history. But see, for example, Hal Draper's book KARL MARX'S
THEORY OF REVOLUTION (several volumes, Monthly Review Press), especially
volume I. Marx talked a lot about bureaucracy. For example, in CAPITAL, he
talks about how bureaucrats (hired managers) were doing more and more of the
work that capitalists took credit for doing. BTW, Marx was quite familiar
with a quasi-Weberian view of the state bureaucracy, that of Hegel.

Weber & Marx have different theories of bureaucracy. Weber was
pro-bureaucracy, seeing hierarchies of this sort as an efficient and
"rational" way of attaining goals. (My late friend Al Szymanski (sp.?) once
embraced this view, arguing for his version of "Leninism" by saying that a
top-down (bureaucratic) organization was the most efficient way to organize
a revolution. If corporations use hierarchy, why can't we?) 

Draper quotes Marx again and again as being anti-bureaucracy (and in favor
of democracy, as with the Paris Commune) or at least as having a more
realistic vision of bureaucracy than Weber.  

>...When a "giant bureaucracy" is mentioned, I get this picture of an
enormous collection of people sitting at desks in office buildings.
HOWEVER, it is not this bureau-proletariat of secretaries, clerks,
mailboys, receptionists, beancounters, etc. that is the "cratic", the
power in either Russia or the New Deal, or any government. This mass of
deskclerks is not the cause of "redtape" or anti-democratic rule from
above, as if they took a vote among the vast bureaucracy to exercise its
power on major questions before whatever institution with whatever
bureaucracy. "Bureaucracy" is a very misleading concept that is rife in
liberal political analysis.<

The thing about bureaucracy is that the power of any individual rises as you
go up the hierarchy (though that power is hardly absolute, since people down
below can often block the effectiveness of the organization --that's one of
the things that "red tape" is about). The difference between the top
bureaucrats and the petty bureaucrats is a little like the difference
between the grand and petty bourgeoisie. (Unlike Weber, I see a bureaucracy
as involving a lot of competition.)

Usually these days, however, the bureaucracy is only a means to an end: the
corporate owners use it to try to attain maximum profits by organizing
production, marketing, etc. The state bureaucracy is similarly a tool of the
state elite, which under capitalism by and large serves the preservation of
the system. 

Getting beyond capitalism, there are lots of cases where the bureaucracy
could be seen as a ruling class of some sort. The Pharoah couldn't rule
ancient Egypt without relying on the bureaucracy, so the latter got a lot of
the power. In pre-modern China, the bureaucracy was clearly a powerful and
self-perpetuating stratum, bringing in only those who could pass the
calligraphy test (and the like) to run the show. In pre-revolutionary (and
in many ways, pre-capitalist) Russia, the upper bureaucrats had noble titles
and quite a bit of power, often combining "feudal" power with a piece of
state power.

Under the Soviet system, the ruling stratum was bureaucratic: the leadership
of the Communist Party ruled their party in a top-down way, while that Party
held a monopoly of political power. (State force was mobilized to suppress
or buy off any opposition.) That is, the Party "owned" the state, which in
turn officially owned the means of production and controlled the economy (to
the extent that the planning process worked), i.e., they had more control
than anyone else did over the process of the production and utilization of
surplus-labor and the accumulation of fixed means of production. 

>Perhaps the kernel of truth in this demogogy is the hierarchy in
"bureaucracy" . In other words, the bosses of the bureausitters, the
"cracy' of the bureaucsitters not the bureausitters en masse.  It's the
SMALLNESS of the bureacracy at the top that is the problem. We want a
big bureaucracy, in the sense of masses people having the power and
control over society and their lives.<

Yes, it's the top-down nature of the rule -- hierarchy as opposed to
democracy -- that's the problem. If bureaucracy were to be held
democratically responsible at each level and stage, the bureaucracy can be
more an means to an end, one determined democratically. Thus the problem
with bureaucracy is ultimately that of forcing it to be subordinate to
democracy.

Jim Devine

H-B: REV: Katzman on Dore _Stock Market Capitalism

[michael perelman]

H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [EMAIL PROTECTED] (March, 2002)

Ronald Dore. _Stock Market Capitalism: Welfare Capitalism: Japan and
Germany versus the Anglo-Saxons_.  New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000. xii + 239 pp.  Table, index, notes, and preface.
$19.95 (paper), ISBN 0-19-924062-0.

Reviewed for H-Japan by Sandra Katzman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Department
of Foreign Languages, National Defense Academy of Japan

Capital!

This book provides a good guide of change in economic behaviors of
countries.  Although it challenges the less financially astute reader,
it makes more sense upon each reading.  It is well-documented.  The
author explicitly shows a warmth for people's daily lives as the basis
of economic systems.

_Stock Market Capitalism: Welfare Capitalism_ by Ronald Dore is about
"living people whose families and schools and tobacco advertisements and
sitcoms and politicians' speeches and work friendships have made them
into individuals who, in spite of their infinite variety can-most of
them at least-be discerned to belong to the genus Americana, the genus
Japonica, the genus Anglicana or Germanica" (p. viii).

Dore says that he set out originally to consider the future of
capitalism. But by the time he finished writing, an alternative form of
capitalism had already arrived.  And so his inquiry progressed to
"whether or not there will continue to be an alternative form of
capitalism" (p. xi).

Part 1, "The Original Japanese Model," starts with a chart of simple
dichotomies between the Anglo-Saxon firm and its Japanese counterpart.
In a long list, Dore compares the two models across various categories:
mergers and acquisitions, personal objectives of managers, indices used
to measure managerial performance, disciplinary constraints on managers,
social perception of the firm, behavior in a recession, responses to
secular decline of industry sectors, wages and salaries, the nature of
the employment contract, reward dispersion, role of workers' unions,
effort-inducing incentives, the nature of authority relations, and
pension funds.

Part II is titled "Change and Controversy in Japan."  Dore writes about
the extent of change.  For example: "But the charge that Japan has an
'insider system' over which shareholders exercise little monitoring
control remains true" (p. 79).  This broad statement is followed by many
supporting details.

Japanese and German terms appear sometimes side by side, as in an
explanation of a nineteenth century commercial code about auditors.
"(_Kansayakkai_ is the standard translation for the modern German
_Aufsichtsrat_)" (p. 101).

The book includes economic predictions.  "Firms' increased involvement
with the foreign financial community will undoubtedly be one further
route by which the shift to Anglo-Saxon notions of economic rationality
comes to permeate Japanese management" (p. 126).

The author writes with an authority that puts the culture in context
with a single sentence. "The egalitarian characteristics of the Japanese
system-the compressed reward differentials, the strong redistributive
element in the welfare system and the health service, the emphasis on
universal schooling-have all rested, not only on the benevolent
sentiments of the elite, but also on the power to make trouble possessed
by unions and opposition parties" (p. 129).

Dore often numbers the points of his discussion.  For example, "On the
third of the four features which mark Japanese economic structure and
behaviour off from the classical Anglo-Saxon model-a greater tilt
towards cooperation in the competition/cooperation balance among market
competitors" (p. 143).

Dore discusses Japanese industry associations including petrol retail,
domestic airlines, beer, and fire and accident insurance.

Part III is "German Parallels."  Dore describes Japan's similarity to
Germany.  "Japan's post-Confucian neighbors apart, Germany is the
country which most obviously resembles Japan both in being at the
beginning of the financialization/liberalization process and starting,
like Japan, with more deeply institutionalized, uncertainty-eliminating
structures and a much more 'productivist' culture than either Britain or
the United States" (p.  171).  He supports his statements by quoting
public opinion polls and new articles from the main German business
press.

Part IV is the "Conclusion," which addresses the effect of the
convergence of the economic models on countries' identities. "Germany
will clearly lose much of its separate identity as it is absorbed in, or
absorbs, Europe.  Japan will still for a long while to come be a much
more autonomous entity"  (p. 239).

Of the book's organization, the author cautions that although the
largest section is about Japan, the story is about "modern capitalism"
(p. 2).

Dore characterizes some of his research as "a trawl through the
references to the 1997 law introducing stock options in the _Nikkei
Shimbun_" (p.  68).

Dore expresses his opinions in appropriate w

FW: Re: Markets and Marx: Whither China?

[michael pugliese]

>--- Original Message ---
>From: James Lawler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: 4/3/02 3:48:42 PM
>
I am curious about the statistics cited by Cliff below from Sidney's
>previous message. I just read other statistics from an article
posted on
>another list, at  
>http://www.pww.org/article/view/899 Here a recent delegation
of the
>Communist Party USA to China was told that the "state-owned
sector" in
>1997 was over 75% of the economy. The impression is given that
this
>figure continues to be roughly valid. Was this misleading? Could
the
>state sector have dropped so drastically in such a short time?
>
>The article just posted on our list by Michel Pugliese (March
28,
>"China") states "Since 1998, 25 million workers have been laid
off from
>state companies, Li Rongrong, the country's economy minister,
said in
>Beijing on March 8." I don't see how that can imply a drop from
75% to
>37% of the economy.
>
>No doubt this has already been explained in one of our earlier
very
>informative messages on this topic. So excuse me if I need some
>repetition.
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Jim Lawler
>
>
>-Original Message-
>From: Society for the Philosophical Study of Marxism Listserve
>[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Cliff
DuRand
>Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2002 8:38 PM
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Markets and Marx: Whither China?
>
>For some time now I have been wanting to make some
points in
>the debate about markets and socialism as it relates to China.
 I
>apologize to Ed that I have not found the time until now to
weigh in on
>his side.
>I look at the percentages Sidney Gluck cites: 33%
of China's
>gross national product produced by small private businesses,
30% by
>large joint stock companies, and 37% by state owned and collective
and
>village enterprises.  That shows an economic system that is
nearly
>equally divided between the petty bourgeoisie, capitalism, and
>socialism.  While the socialist sector still has a slight (but
declining
>edge), three decades ago it was 100% of the economy.
>
>
>

Re: Re: PBS series on world economy

[Joel Blau]

Daniel Yergin, Beverly Hills High School, class of 1964.

Joel Blau (BHHS, '62: at least when Jim has a classmate, it's Krugman,
and I doubt he would trade Krugman for Yergin, even up!)

Michael Perelman wrote:

> Warning !!!
>
> Anyone who misbehaves on the list will be forced to watch this
> program as
> a punishment.
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Updates: A20 Mobe

[michael pugliese]

Received:
4/3/02 8:54:45 AM

From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Add to People Section
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 

CC:
 

Subject:
[ASDnet] FYI: A20 

please circulate to friends 
 
Tuesday, April 2  
 
Updates  
April 20th Mobilization  
http://www.unitedwemarch.org  
(202) 265-3980  
 
Dear Friends,  
 
We're three weeks away, woohoo! The weekend of April 
19th - 22nd is indeed going to be historic. Our 
apologies if this update reaches you somewhat delayed, 
but know you can always contact us at the DC 
office(202) 265-3980.  
 
The Rally & March  
...in case you didn't already know - bg 
demonstration in DC on April 20th!  
Gather at 10:30am at the Washington Monument for a 
kick-off rally  
11:00am - Rally begins! with mcee Amy Goodman of 
Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now"  
1:00pm - March & let your voice be heard - we'll walk 
north on 15th Street, southeast on Pennsylvania 
Avenue, joint mobilization convergence at Freedom 
Plaza.  
3:00pm - National Rally for Peace & Justice at the 
national mall (between 3rd and 4th Street, across the 
west steps of the Capitol Building).  
 
We're happy to announce...  
The Reverend Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King, III 
have confirmed their presence on April 20th! They will 
join a growing list of prominent speakers including 
Media Benjamin (Global Exhange), Kathy Kelly (Voices 
in the Wilderness), Philip Berrigan (Jonah House), Ron 
Daniels (Center for Constitutional Rights), Amber 
Amundson (Peaceful Tomorrows), Michael Ratner (Center 
for Constitutional Rights), Erica Smiley (Black 
Radical Congress - Youth Caucus) and many more! And 
music from folk singers David Rovics and Pat Humphries 
and political hip-hop sensation Division X.  
 
Pacifica Radio  
We're also happy to announce Pacifica Radio will 
broadcast live throughout the event. Sister stations 
nation wide will broadcast our message on April 20th.  
 
...so is this a permited event?  
Yes, we have indeed secured a permit for this event.  
 
Banners and Puppets and Balloons, Oh my!  
For all those curious bearers of signs - we've been 
informed by the Park Police that are NO restrictions 
for banner, puppet and sign dimensions and 
constructions. Balloons are restricted only in that 
they must not be air borne (meaning big Thanksgiving 
Day helium balloons).  
 
Tabling at the Event  
Bring your literature, bumper stickers, newspapers, 
pamphlets and any other political construct and set up 
a table at the kick-off and closing rallies at the 
Washington Monument and/or on the Mall (between 3rd & 
4th Streets, west of the Capital Building). Give us a 
call to confirm (202) 265-3980.  
 
Trainings and Workshops  
 
Thursday, April 18th  
Nonviolence Skills Training 7:30pm - 10:30pm  
Legal Training 8:00pm - 10:00pm  
 
Friday, April 19th  
 
Teach-Ins:  
DC Links: War and it?s Impact on the District 9:30am-  
11:30am  
Militarism, Youth & People of Color 12noon - 2:00pm  
Racial/Cultural/Religious Profiling-USA Patriot Act  
2:00pm - 4:00pm  
 
Skills Training:  
Nonviolence 9:00am-12noon, 1:00pm-4:00pm  
Nonviolence 12noon-5:00pm  
Anti-Oppression 9:00am-12noon, 1:00pm-4:00pm  
Media 4:00pm - 5:30pm, 5:30pm-7:00pm  
Legal Training 5:00pm-7:00pm  
Plenary Panel - Kick Off to Global Justice Weekend 
8:00pm - 10:00pm  
Evening Solidarity Concert 10:00pm  
 
 
 
If you're taking a bus to DC...  
we have a drop off point and parking location for you. 
We have reserved parking spaces for Saturday, April 
20th at RFK Stadium for $25 per bus per day. Parking 
spaces have been reserved from 8:00am to 9:00pm. Your 
driver should drop you off at the Washington Monument 
(between 15th and Independence Avenue SW) then head to 
2001 East Capitol Street SE for parking. (To return to 
the Washington Monument - from there go east on 
Independence Avenue toward 16th Street, left on 19th 
Street SE, slight right unto East Capitol Street SE. 
If you are bringing a bus, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
so that we can accurately secure space for parking.  
If you're coming on Friday, let us know and we will 
work to secure a bus parking space for you.  
 
Lobby Days  
Get to town early and take your message to Congress! 
Sign up for a Congressional visit. You can either 
contact your Senator or Representative directly to 
schedule a visit (call the Congressional switchboard 
at 202.224.3121 for your Member's phone number) or 
contact the DC office (202) 265-3980 and we will 
schedule the visit for you. You can also visit 
http://www.house.gov/writerep to find your 
Representative and 
www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_senate.cfm. to find 
your Senator. Then, sign up for our lobby training.  
This 3 hour skills share workshop will help you 
prepare for your visit. Workshops are scheduled from 
9:00am to 12noon both on Friday, April 19th and 
Monday, April 22nd. Call the DC office to reserve your 
spot, or sign up online at  
http://www

Re: Nader, a FellowTraveler

[Sabri Oncu]

> Yes, Sabri,
>
> You make a good point to relate Nader to today's
> anarchists.

It was not my intention at all. Moreover, if the left anarchists
hear what you said and think that I did that, they would view
this socialist friend of theirs a traitor, something I am not.
They have resisted the Nader and Public Citizen-Mike Dolan entry
into , and their attempt to take ownership of, the movement
during the Battle of Seattle from day one and there after.
Apparently, you don't like the anarchists, at least, not as much
as I do. I guess I gave away my feelings toward Nader here but
hey!


> I would classify anarchists similarly to liberals.
> They are left to the extent that they are for socialism
> as an ultimate target.  There is rightwing anarchism
> in the form of libertarianism. However, as you say in
> the here and now, left anarchists are resisting globalized
> imperialism through protests in the imperial center.

I don't think this classification, that is, classifying them
similarly to liberals, is fair. Apparently, you don't know who
Ilan Shalif is because if you did, you wouldn't dare to make such
a classification. If he heard what you said, he would have killed
you here in the cyberspace : ) It is like classifying Louis
similarly to liberals. I cannot believe this.

When I was in Turkey, I visited some friends one day. One of them
is the son of a Marxist-Leninist shoemaker, who himself used to
be a member of a "Stalinist" party. He also played a major role
in the organization of this so-called N30 march in Turkey. His
father, the Marxist-Leninist shoemaker, who is in his seventies,
lives with my friend. That day, we were praising our anarchists
friends for their contributions to the movement and a few minutes
after we started our praising, the father couldn't resist saying
this:

"They are serving the capitalists."

I guess this is an instict of some socialists. Luckily, his
formerly "Stalinist" son thinks differently.

Sabri

Re: Krugman...Nader

[Sabri Oncu]

> Sabri,
>
> You asked  whether Nader is a leftist. Is he ?
>
> ( Despite defining "left" 's being a "political football" :>) )
>
> Charles

No, he is not, in my view. If Nader is a leftist, then most
Kemalists are leftists too.

How do you like my football (not the American one) playin?

Sabri

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2002:

RELEASED TODAY:  In February, 266 metropolitan areas recorded higher
unemployment rates than a year earlier, 40 areas had lower rates, and 16
areas had rates that were unchanged, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
Thirteen metropolitan areas had jobless rates of at least 10.0 percent,
eight of which were located in California's agricultural Central Valley.
Sixteen areas posted unemployment rates below 3.0 percent, with nine located
in the South and five in the Midwest.  The national unemployment rate was
6.1 percent, not seasonally adjusted, in February. (Data for the nine
metropolitan areas in Michigan were not available at the time of release).

The massive U.S. service sector expanded for the second straight month in
March, but the pace of activity slowed from the nearly 1-1/2 year peaks hit
in February, a report shows today.  The Institute for Supply Management, an
industry trade group, said its monthly nonmanufacturing index slipped to
57.3 in March from 58.7 in February, against market expectations for a 57.0
reading.  March marks the second straight month the index has stayed above
the 50 mark, indicating expansion in the sector that includes everything
from transportation to legal and financial services.  In February, the index
surged well above expectations to its highest level since November 2000,
prompting economists to raise their growth forecasts for the U.S. economy
(Reuters, http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2002-04-03-services.htm).

U.S. vehicle sales fell a mild 1 percent last month compared with March
2001, offering encouragement to analysts and automakers that demand will
strengthen and the nation's economy will continue to improve.  Sales of
passenger cars fell 2 percent compared with the same month a year ago, while
light truck sales slipped 1 percent, the industry reported Tuesday.  Several
automakers say strength in sales to retail customers helped their results.
"The month was better than most forecasts and better than Detroit was
expecting," said David Healy, an analyst with Burnham Securities.  "That
means that production will probably increase in the second quarter" (David
Runk, Associated Press,
http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/340068p-2815793c.html).


<>

BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D]

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2002:

About 6.6 percent of U.S. families had at least one unemployed family member
last year, compared with 5.7 percent the year before, the Labor Department
says (The Wall Street Journal "Work Week" feature, page A1).

The Bureau of Labor Statistics weighs the merits of including medical
expenses borne by employers, not just consumers, in the consumer price
index.  Given current trends, that would likely nudge up measured inflation.
Bureau official John Greenlees cautions such a change isn't currently in the
works but could eventually be tested in an "experimental index" (The Wall
Street Journal "Work Week" feature, page A1).

A dwindling proportion of young less educated black men are employed today,
compared with 20 years ago.  At the same time, employment among similarly
educated black women has soared and job rates among comparable whites and
Latinos have not changed, according to a major study to be released today by
the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy.  Paul
Offner and Harry Holzer of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute found that
employment and labor force participation rates of young black men with no
more than a high school diploma currently lag 10 to 25 percentage points
behind similarly educated white and Hispanic men.  Holzer and Offner
examined government data collected between 1979 and 2000 from black, white
and Hispanic men and women ages 16 to 24 who were out of school and had a
high school education or less.  Barely half -- 52 percent -- of the black
men were employed in 2000, compared with 62 percent two decades earlier,
they found.  Employment levels of young white and Hispanic men have held
steady over the past two decades, with nearly eight in 10 working.  At the
same time, the employment rate for young similarly educated black women has
increased from 37 to 52 percent (The Washington Post, page A13).

Layoff announcements at U.S. firms fell in March to their lowest level in 10
months but remain higher than the monthly average during the last recession,
suggesting recovery could be slow and uneven, Challenger Gray & Christmas
said today.  The outplacement firm said in a monthly report that job cuts
announced in March, 102,315, was 20 percent fewer than the 128,115 layoff
announcements in February.  But Challenger warned that although an economic
recovery may be underway, it is still too early to declare a persistent
reversal of the rising trend in unemployment (Reuters,
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2002-04-02-layoff-plans.htm).

Orders to U.S. factories dipped 0.1 percent in February, as weaker demand
for computers and cars eclipsed gains for household appliances and
industrial machinery, the Commerce Department reported today.  It marked the
first drop in overall orders since November and followed a solid 1.1 percent
advance in January.  The weaker-than-expected performance in orders for a
wide variety of manufactured goods comes just one day after a more
forward-looking report offered some good news for the nation's struggling
manufacturing sector (Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press,
http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/338919p-2811397c.html).

Retail sales at discount, chain, and department stores fell the first 4
weeks of March, as an expected boost from Easter-related sales failed to
materialize, Instinet Research said Tuesday.  The Redbook Retail Sales
Average slipped 1.1 percent the 4 weeks ended March 30, compared with the
same period last month.  Sales compared with the same week last year were up
3.7 percent.  "This week's performance was seen as disappointing in light of
an expected surge in sales into Easter weekend," Redbook said  (Reuters,
http://www.usatoday.com/money/retail/2002-04-02-redbook.htm; Anne
D'Innocenzio, Associated Press,
http://www.nandotimes.com/business/story/337701p-2804114c.html; The New York
Times, page C2).

Even with Social Security and 401(k) plans, American aren't saving enough,
declares Louis Uchitelle (The New York Times, March 31, "Week in Review"
Section 4, page 1).  Congress authorized 401(k) accounts in 1978, allowing
workers to defer taxes on retirement savings.  The intent was to supplement
company plans, not displace them, says Uchitelle. But that is what is
happening.  By 1998, the latest year for which Labor Department figures are
available, 27 percent of the more than 100 million privately employed
Americans had 401(k) accounts to supplement Social Security in retirement.
An additional 15 percent had both 401(k)'s and company-paid pensions.  Yet
the percentage of workers with only a company-paid pension on top of Social
Security plummeted to 7 percent in 1998, from 28 percent in 1979. During
this period, no group has had more time to accumulate savings in 401(k)'s
than people now in their late 50's and early 60's.  Some in this age group
have built their accounts into rich nest eggs, but many have not.  By 1998,
the average amount

Re: PBS series on world economy

[Michael Perelman]

Warning !!!

Anyone who misbehaves on the list will be forced to watch this
program as
a punishment.
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

The best allies money and oil can buy

[Ken Hanly]

 From the New Statesman...K. Hanly


Wednesday 3rd April 2002

  The US twists arms in the Middle East
Dan Plesch
Monday 1st April 2002



Dan Plesch reveals that, in return for supporting a new Gulf war, Turkey
could get Iraqi oilfields

Many countries have spoken out against the Bush administration's plans to
overthrow Saddam Hussein, but it would be a mistake to suppose that they
will in fact cause trouble if the bombs start to fall. Washington has a long
record of bringing its allies into line.

Take Turkey. Its prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, continues to oppose publicly
the idea of attacking Iraq. But there is every reason to believe that the US
has already offered control of Iraq's northern oilfields to Turkey in return
for its support in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what informed sources in
Washington tell me; and it is confirmed by press reports of what Richard
Perle, an influential adviser in the Bush administration, said while he was
in Ankara with the vice-president, Dick Cheney.

The oil-rich Mosul area has been disputed since the collapse of the Ottoman
empire at the end of the First World War. The British drew the maps and
invented the states that exist today. Turkey disputed the British decision
to give the Mosul province to the new Kingdom of Iraq, but finally accepted
it in a treaty signed in 1926.

The issue remained dormant until Iraq, under Saddam, attacked Iran in the
mid- 1980s. Weakened by the war, Saddam invited Turkey to crush Kurdish
rebels in northern Iraq. At this time, a total collapse of the Iraqi state
seemed entirely possible and Turkish interest in the oilfields revived,
particularly in the Turkish media. Yet when George Bush Snr raised the
"Mosul option" in the wake of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, the government in
Ankara declined the "invitation". It feared an Arab backlash against
redrawing the borders and it was not anxious to acquire more territory
populated by Kurds.

In 1995, however, 35,000 Turkish troops attacked the Kurds in northern Iraq,
an act ignored by the British and US governments who had made much of their
protection of the Kurds from Saddam Hussein. As the Turkish troops withdrew,
President Suleyman Demirel said: "The border on those heights is wrong.
Actually, that is the boundary of the oil region. Turkey begins where that
boundary ends. Geologists drew that line. It is not Turkey's national
border."

He retracted these statements after Arab protests. But Turkish interest has
continued, and today the Turkish national oil company is drilling new wells
in the Khumala field as part of a UN-sanctioned oil-for-food programme.
Turning this commercial presence into a guaranteed supply of cheap oil,
courtesy of a new puppet regime in Baghdad, may be the carrot that the US is
offering Turkey. It would go some way to compensating for the decade-long
loss of trade with Iraq that has damaged the Turkish economy.

But oil is not the only, or even the biggest, lever that the US has over
Turkey. It also funds half its IMF and World Bank loans.

As it happens, the US is now less reliant than it was on Turkish airbases,
as it is taking over huge former Soviet airbases in Bulgaria and Romania.
But Turkey's army has a reputation for brutal effectiveness, and the US
would like to make use of it. Turkish forces are already serving in Kabul,
and are set to take on a greater role. Such power-projection fits into the
nationalist objectives that Turkey has pursued in the Caucasus and Central
Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

One US option in Iraq - an alternative to the more commonly mentioned
options, including an invasion through the Gulf and support for internal
uprisings - is to seize one or more airbases in the country and use these to
launch commando and larger ground-force raids. Such "in-country" bases are
essential for special forces operations, as proved to be the case in
Afghanistan - you cannot perform effective missions on day trips. And this
is where the Turks come in: their forces could help to secure a main
operating base inside Iraq. If, in the process, they crush Kurdish
"terrorists", Washington will not complain.

The real objective of the US in Iraq is to destroy the idea that anyone can
fight America and get away with it. For US conservative strategists, this
was Bush Snr's strategic failure in the Gulf war. Once the US has bases in
Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, military operations against Iran, next on
the list of "axis of evil" countries, become more viable. This approach to
the axis of evil may seem too reckless to take seriously, and there is no
certainty that the Americans will pursue it, but we should not underestimate
the White House's determination to destroy its enemies.

So what should Britain and Europe do? In the short term, if Europe offered
more economic support, Turkey could afford to be more flexible and
independent in handling Washington's demands. In the longer term, Europe
should remove its dependency on Gulf oil, which le

Re: Re: Re: Speaking of What's Left

[ravi]

Ian Murray wrote:
>
> Here's one for penner's. How do we get Michael Perelman's new book
> widely talked about? Maybe he and Doug can do a tag team book tour
> when Doug's done with his. Buy lotto tickets for financing
> purposes.
>

one useful thing to do might be to submit reviews on amazon.com and bn.com.

--ravi

Re: Re: Speaking of What's Left

[Ian Murray]

- Original Message -
From: "Ian Murray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> > Glad you are grabbing the torch of practical-critical activity, Ian. Take it and 
>run with it !
> >
> > Charles
> >
> =
>
> Now if I could just figure out a way to get the geniuses on this list on the Oprah 
>Winfrey and Larry King shows, along
> with a steady stream of profiles in People magazine, we'd be on our way. Maybe I 
>should be realistic and start with
> Dennis Miller on HBO.! :-)
>
> Ian



Here's one for penner's. How do we get Michael Perelman's new book widely talked 
about? Maybe he and Doug can do a tag
team book tour when Doug's done with his. Buy lotto tickets for financing purposes.

Ian

PBS series on world economy

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, April 3, 2002

TV REVIEW | 'COMMANDING HEIGHTS' 
 
Charting the Mysteries of World Markets

By NEIL GENZLINGER

The idea of watching a six-hour documentary on the history of the global
economy probably fills a lot of people with terror. And there is certainly
terror to be found in "Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World
Economy," which arrives tonight on PBS in the first of three two-hour
installments. 

The fear factor here, however, does not involve gruesome death by boredom,
though there is sluggishness aplenty in the six hours. Rather, viewers who
come to the program feeling they don't understand how the new economy works
may end up with the horrifying suspicion that the world's best economists
don't either.

"Commanding Heights" is based on the book of the same name by Daniel Yergin
and Joseph Stanislaw, which was first published in 1998. Their work has
been updated here, somewhat fitfully, to try to account for Sept. 11, the
economic sputtering that had begun even before the attacks, and so on. But
it is hard to escape the feeling that the program would have had a more
authentic ring two years ago, when production began. Today it sometimes
calls to mind those scientists who desperately try to shape data to fit a
pet theory, rather than search for a theory consistent with the data.

Part 1, "The Battle of Ideas," the most engaging segment, lays the
historical foundation, portraying economics as a continuing battle between
the views of John Maynard Keynes and those of Friedrich August von Hayek.
[This is consistent with PBS's narrow-spectrum programming.]

It follows these men and their schools of thought through the 20th century,
Keynesians dominating for most of that time with the idea that the
government should manipulate the economy. Hayek and his views that markets
should reign came to the forefront only after the phenomenon known as
stagflation — inflation and high unemployment at the same time — left the
Keynesians scratching their heads.

The Hayek forces emerged triumphant when Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher gained office simultaneously. Free-market theories started to be
turned into practice. "You had Reagan and Thatcher at the same time, two
what I call idea politicians," George P. Shultz, the former secretary of
state, points out. "They had ideas, they were convinced they were the right
ideas, and they put them into effect."

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/arts/television/03GENZ.html

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

Re: RE: Re: Bureaucracy

[Ian Murray]

- Original Message - 
From: "michael pugliese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 9:44 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:24624] RE: Re: Bureaucracy


> 
> "To Control or to Smash Bureaucracy: Weber and Lenin on Politics,
> " by Erik Olin Wright, Berkeley Journal of Sociology circa '75
> or so. Reprinted (I think ) as a chapter of his, "Class, Cris
> and the State, " Verso Books.
> Michael Pugliese, g*d knows why I bother posting these cites
> here. No one ever goes to the library to read 'em! ;-)
==

Not true.

Ian

Fw: [R-G] 03.04.2002 THE GRAND OIL PRICE & TERRORISM CONSPIRACY - STOP!!! THE RUMORS!

[michael pugliese]

Message: 3 
From: "IJA" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
To: "The people & anarchists and authorities world wide" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 16:24:54 +0200 
Organization: International Journal of Anarchism 
Subject: [R-G] 03.04.2002 THE GRAND OIL PRICE & TERRORISM CONSPIRACY
- STOP!!! THE RUMORS! 
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
 
>From IJ@ 4(31) updated 03.04.2002 
-=

--- 
 
PRESS RELEASE AND NOTE FROM THE 
Anarchist International Embassy in Oslo 
http://www.anarchy.no/embassy.html=20 
 
-=

--- 
 
THE GRAND OIL PRICE & TERRORISM CONSPIRACY - STOP !!! THE RUMORS!!!

 
-=

--- 
 
The rumors that some high ranking, mainly marxist Norwegians
and their = 
"useful" idiots, have given much aid-money to Arafat, so he could
= 
support the terrorists, to make trouble in the Mid East and thus
hike = 
the oil price (and tank-rates), must be seen as a 1st of April
joke and = 
nothing else. The Anarchy of Norway just doesn't play politics
so dirty, = 
although the oil-price of course have hiked now as usual when
there is = 
trouble in the Mid East, and the PLO-state of Arafat has gotten
= 
relatively much money in aid from Norway. These events should
not be = 
seen combined, and introducing a (false) conspiracy theory is
not = 
correct. There are also other reasons for a hike in the oil-price,
say, = 
the USA's talks vis-=E0-vis Saddam Hussein, and better economical
= 
conjunctures in general.=20 
 
02.04.2002. Although the Conference on terrorism and IJ@ yesterday
tried = 
to stop the rumors, they continue to grow. We must simply repeat
that = 
these growing rumors are not based on facts! The whole idea of
the so = 
called secret operation, code name "Bongo from Congo" where=20

 
1. the Yes to EU-bureaucrats in the Labor Party, some of them
having got = 
top jobs in Statoil without too much qualifications,=20 
 
2. the UN's "peace envoy for the Middle East" Terje "Red" Larsen
plus = 
Gro Harlem Brundtland and tops in the Royal Norwegian Foreign
Ministry, = 
UD;=20 
 
3. the leaders of the "Red oil-workers unions", plus=20 
 
4. the coming bureaucrats of the Labor Party's Youth organization
AUF, = 
have a conspiracy with=20 
 
5. Y. Arafat and the PLO-State terrorists, to=20 
 
6. hike the oil-price, and share the profit through different
channels, = 
aid included, to make even more trouble in the Mid East and hike
the = 
oil-price even more, etc., in=20 
 
7. an oil-price & terrorism spiral, in a prolonged war with Israel,
also = 
including trade boycott etc. to make it real long, that's=20

 
8. just far out! Although=20 
 
9. the marxist influenced Norwegian media also write about a
long Mid = 
East war 02.04.2002, and thus contribute perhaps to even more
oil-price = 
hike, there are no reasons to believe that=20 
 
10. the "Oil-price & Terrorism Conspiracy" , code name "Bongo
from = 
Congo", really exists.=20 
 
11.- 03.04.2002 the rumors are getting even wilder: A faction
of OPEC = 
with ramifications to rich muslims and bin-Laden's al-Qaeda,
some = 
factions in the UN and in CIA connected to some warprofit sharks
in USA, = 
are part of this Grand Conspiracy, and they also are behind the
= 
11.09.2001 events. 
 
12. IJ@ can not confirm that the rumors are rooted back to some
leftists = 
at Industrial Workers of the World, that earlier have made up
= 
smearstories and lies about the Anarchy of Norway and the International
= 
Workers of the World, or some rightist Americans , that think
UN is a = 
commie nest ruling the USA. Both groups have however traditionally
a = 
tendency to dream up large Conspiracies, and think economy is
the basis = 
- or the only thing that counts - to explain what is going on
in = 
society, and try to make up scapegoats. However to think Gro
Harlem = 
Brundtland, the other Labor Party bosses and the UD tops, etc.
are the = 
real spiders behind the Grand Conspiracy and the 11.09. 2001
attacks as = 
well as the Mid East trouble is far out. To make the Anarchy
of Norway = 
scapegoat for the 11.09 and Mid East trouble is not fair! 
 
NACO demands such nonsense rumors should be stopped at once!=20

 
However to stop further rumors, more restrictions on the aid-money
to = 
the PLO-State of Arafat should perhaps be introduced, NACO says:
"It = 
must be certain not an "=F8re" of the Norwegian aid-money to
Palestine = 
goes to support the terrorists, directly or indirectly, to avoid
the = 
Anarchy of Norway gets a bad reputation internationally.=20 
 
Even 1st of April joke rumors may spread and be harmfull, if
there is = 
just a small fraction of possible truth in it. So all support
that = 
doesn't go directly to peaceful organizations of the Palestinian
people, = 
and 100% certain avoid "their" corrupt authorities plus terrorists,
and = 
other political measures that

RE: Jonathan Swift returns

[Devine, James]

Jonathan Swift's satire was aimed at preaching to the non-converted. This
one doesn't end up that way, since it rapidly gets into leftist jargon
(e.g., "core" and "periphery"). (Besides, a lot of this proposal has already
come true, as with folks in Guatemala giving blood that ends up in the U.S.)

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



> -Original Message-
> From: Ian Murray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, April 01, 2002 4:47 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:24551] Jonathan Swift returns
> 
> 
> < http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/579/op10.htm >
> Comparative advantages
> Inspired by the Monterrey conference, M Shahid Alam* suggests 
> new and efficient uses for the surplus
> bodies of the underdeveloped world
> 
> 
> '... it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide 
> for them [Irish children] in such a
> manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the 
> parish, or wanting food and raiment
> for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary 
> contribute to the feeding, and partly to the
> clothing, of many thousands.' -- Jonathan Swift, A Modest 
> Proposal (1729)
> 
> The world has never shown a greater, more deeply felt 
> solicitude for the wretched of the earth --
> the hundreds of millions who die miserable deaths on less 
> than a dollar a day -- as it has in the
> six months since 11 September. These concerns were showcased 
> at the Conference on Financing
> Development underway last week in Monterrey, Mexico, where 
> the heads of the richest, most powerful
> nations appended their signatures to a "consensus" on how to 
> eradicate global poverty in our
> lifetime.
> 
> It is indeed gratifying that the core countries, so soon 
> after the dastardly attacks of 11
> September, have recovered their sense of the great civilising 
> mission inaugurated by Christopher
> Columbus, and are once again fully seized of the few 
> remaining tasks that still demand their
> attention. In the first aftermath of the 11 September 
> attacks, it had appeared that the righteous
> anger of the American public -- which never fails to produce 
> great consequences when it is unjustly
> provoked -- would incinerate any country even remotely 
> connected to the hijackers. Thankfully,
> President Bush was fully apprised of the need to placate this 
> great Moloch. Having accomplished this
> task quickly and brilliantly -- by scattering Al-Qa'eda and 
> their Taliban hosts to the four winds --
> he has now joined his war against terrorism with a war on poverty.
> 
> In case my reference to America's anger is misconstrued, I 
> wish to make it clear that I consider
> this response justified in the fullest measure. This anger 
> was justified because of all the burdens
> the United States has carried in the past, the most important 
> has been advancing the West's
> universal project of civilising the rest of the world. We 
> have intervened repeatedly, by force of
> arms as well as stealth, to make the world safe for 
> capitalism. No great power in the recorded
> history of mankind has dedicated itself so selflessly -- and, 
> may I add, ceaselessly -- to
> propagating freedom; but unlike romantics, anarchists, and 
> other muddle-heads, we have never pursued
> these goals in reckless disregard of the native conditions 
> which sustain free institutions. American
> presidents have never lost sight of the fundamental principle 
> that the lesser breeds will never be
> ready for freedom until they can first embrace free markets, 
> free trade, and free mobility of
> capital across national frontiers.
> 
> In the pursuit of these great goals, the United States has 
> waged a relentless campaign since the
> start of the 20th century to rid the world of its chief 
> scourges: in succession, these have included
> fascism, communism, and a hundred insidious chauvinisms. 
> Having engineered the collapse of Soviet
> Union in 1990, and finally established the firm foundations 
> on which the world could build a
> millennium of prosperity, the least the US could expect from 
> the rest of the world was gratitude,
> and a vote of thanks for establishing an epoch of 
> unprecedented prosperity based on irreversible
> globalisation.
> 
> So when the terrorists struck on 11 September, bringing down 
> the twin symbols of the world's
> financial capital and the military headquarters that make the 
> world safe for capitalism, Americans
> were understandably in deep shock. They were dismayed, 
> discomfited and disoriented. Those who
> understand their inconsolable sorrow could scarcely blame 
> Americans if they responded with a sense
> of outrage, or if their demand for justice occasionally 
> sounded like a call for vengeance.
> 
> After this clarification, I wish to return to the subject of 
> the Monterrey Consensus. On my first
> reading of this historic document, I was moved to tears by 
> the grand vision of its framers; and
> ever

RE: Re: Bureaucracy

[michael pugliese]

"To Control or to Smash Bureaucracy: Weber and Lenin on Politics,
" by Erik Olin Wright, Berkeley Journal of Sociology circa '75
or so. Reprinted (I think ) as a chapter of his, "Class, Cris
and the State, " Verso Books.
Michael Pugliese, g*d knows why I bother posting these cites
here. No one ever goes to the library to read 'em! ;-)

>--- Original Message ---
>From: Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: 4/3/02 9:26:49 AM
>

>
>
>Charles Brown wrote:
>> 
>> Open Bureaucracy vs Bureacracy behind a Screen of Participatory
>> democracy.
>> 
>> Carrol
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> CB: Isn't "bureaucracy" a Weberian and not Marxist concept
? "Bureaucracy" is comparable to "middle class" in the damage
it has done to the political consciousness of masses of workers
and petit bourgeoisie, peasants.
>
>Mostly correct. After some fiddling I've given up arriving at
a precise
>formulation of the necessary qualifications. Your further remarks
>distinguishing the mass of workers in a bureaucracy from the
ruling
>elemtn is wholly correct. I've argued with students in the past
about
>one aspect of this distinction: the "face" of the Administration
>(bureaucracy) are the clerks and secretaries and lower-level
"working
>supervisors," and hence just as Russian peasants looked to the
Czar to
>correct the local tyranny of minor officials or gentry, so students
>would look to the Deans etc. to correct the tyranny or obstructionism
>which they would blame on the grossly underpaid clerks they
dealt with.
>Same thing happens in the resentment people will quite naturally
feel
>(but misdirect) when they are dealing with the desk personnel
in an
>Emergency Room.
>
>[Digression: As to the last, when I was going through that series
of
>destructive headaches a few years ago, I finally wrote out on
a card
>answers to all the questions one had to answer at the front
desk. It is
>really enraging to have to give your social security number
or list the
>drugs one is allergic to while half dead from a migraine.]
>
>Carrol
>
>

Re: Speaking of What's Left

[Ian Murray]

- Original Message -
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



> Speaking of What's Left
> by Ian Murray
> 02 April 2002 15:44 UTC
>
>
>
> ===
>
> Please count the young people for us :
>
>
> Glad you are grabbing the torch of practical-critical activity, Ian. Take it and run 
>with it !
>
> Charles
>
=

Now if I could just figure out a way to get the geniuses on this list on the Oprah 
Winfrey and Larry King shows, along
with a steady stream of profiles in People magazine, we'd be on our way. Maybe I 
should be realistic and start with
Dennis Miller on HBO.! :-)

Ian

Hedge funds face up to dismal returns

[Ulhas Joglekar]

The Economic Times

Thursday, March 28, 2002

Hedge funds face up to dismal returns

REUTERS

LONDON: After months of dismal returns, hedge funds are coming down to
earth,
finding it harder to raise money and make money, bankers say.

Swashbuckling hedge fund managers, who often boast they can deliver
double-digit returns, have produced stellar performances in recent years,
constantly beating mainstream equity indices.

But they too are finding the going increasingly tough as it gets harder to
turn in acceptable returns, with stocks unable to sustain a rally and
interest rates mired near multi-year lows. The average hedge fund lost money
in February and lagged the blue-chip Dow Jones index after January's 50
basis point return.

Low returns, coupled with an unabated growth in startups, is increasing the
pressure for consolidation in an industry where launches surged five-fold in
2001's last quarter over the first.

"I think we're going to see a lot of hedge funds in Europe disappear because
of failure to reach critical mass. We're going to see a significant number
of hedge funds close or merge and consolidate," said Nick Wilson, head of
the European prime brokerage business at U.S. investment bank Lehman
Brothers.

"Even though there is a significant increase in money coming into the
industry, the number of players competing for it has grown also. The
environment is much more difficult today than it has been in previous months
to raise money," he told Reuters.

Industry data point to the start of consolidation. Money flows to European
startups fell in 2001 despite a 50 percent jump in their numbers. Their
average asset size shrank to $45 million from $70 million in 2000, while
industry trackers Eurohedge predict the figure will dip to $25 million in
2002.

Going forward, bankers say hedge funds will be fewer, bigger and more
institutionalised - something that goes against the grain of these mostly
unregulated pools of capital that make high-stake bets in stocks, bonds and
currencies.

"Boutique hedge funds may simply not be able to provide client servicing
that big institutions expect," said Joanna Monroe, alternative investments
head at AXA Investment Managers.

Hedge funds must be small, light and fast to make money out of market
inefficiencies before other investors notice them. "If we get too big, we'll
be like super-tankers," said one insider.Small was beautiful when the market
was a cottage industry run by a few hundred managers.

But 6,000 funds and $550 billion of assets later, pressure is on for
transparency and scrutiny. "Without at least a lukewarm acceptance of these
requirements, the hedge fund market will remain the confines of the high net
worth individual and a selected small institutional client base," said Ross
Ellis, vice-president for alternative investment managers at SEI
Investments.

Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

RE: Re: More on Argentina

[Devine, James]

Charles J. writes: 
>I wouldn't emphasize the dependence on canned meat and weetabix exports as
very explanatory. Of course it might have helped had Brazil also not been
such an agricultural producer.<

I'd say that the problem was that British dominance during the 19th century
prevented Argentina from imitating the U.S. of that era, i.e., building up
industry behind tariff walls in order to serve the domestic market. It had a
lot of the other characteristics of white settler colonies (including the
U.S.) By the time that Argentina got around to Import-Substituting
Industrialization, it was a bit too late (though it _might_ have succeeded).

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

Re: Bureaucracy

[Carrol Cox]

Charles Brown wrote:
> 
> Open Bureaucracy vs Bureacracy behind a Screen of Participatory
> democracy.
> 
> Carrol
> 
> 
> 
> CB: Isn't "bureaucracy" a Weberian and not Marxist concept ? "Bureaucracy" is 
>comparable to "middle class" in the damage it has done to the political consciousness 
>of masses of workers and petit bourgeoisie, peasants.

Mostly correct. After some fiddling I've given up arriving at a precise
formulation of the necessary qualifications. Your further remarks
distinguishing the mass of workers in a bureaucracy from the ruling
elemtn is wholly correct. I've argued with students in the past about
one aspect of this distinction: the "face" of the Administration
(bureaucracy) are the clerks and secretaries and lower-level "working
supervisors," and hence just as Russian peasants looked to the Czar to
correct the local tyranny of minor officials or gentry, so students
would look to the Deans etc. to correct the tyranny or obstructionism
which they would blame on the grossly underpaid clerks they dealt with.
Same thing happens in the resentment people will quite naturally feel
(but misdirect) when they are dealing with the desk personnel in an
Emergency Room.

[Digression: As to the last, when I was going through that series of
destructive headaches a few years ago, I finally wrote out on a card
answers to all the questions one had to answer at the front desk. It is
really enraging to have to give your social security number or list the
drugs one is allergic to while half dead from a migraine.]

Carrol

Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Did the boom benefit workers????

[Ignacio Perrotini Hernández]

Dears James and Doug,
I do agree with Doug. There is an overwhelming empirical evidence in favor 
of the hypothesis that exchange rate movements have contributed almost 
nothing to economic growth in the last decades. Kaldor, Thirlwall, and 
McCombie are good references on that. Hyperdeflation may have contributed 
somehow to rising productivity. However, in the last analysis, despite New 
Macroeconomists´ and monetarists' beliefs, the "successful" disinflation of 
the world economy has  less to do with "smart" Central Banks' monetary 
policies than with the high-tech revolution.
Ignacio

At 03:01 p.m. 26/03/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Devine, James wrote:
>
>>Is there any way that _measured_ productivity could grow due to a rising
>>dollar exchange rate?
>
>Can't see how. A lot of the rise in productivity is the result of crazy 
>output growth in high-tech, because of the quality-adjusted price indexes.
>
>Doug

RE: Re: More on Argentina

[Devine, James]

this list sounds like the Neo-Liberal Manifesto for the world. 

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



> -Original Message-
> From: Charles Jannuzi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 10:40 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [PEN-L:24605] Re: More on Argentina
> 
> 
> Next, consider the policies that were worked out as a 
> solution. Actually,
> the list reads like the Koizumi concept of restructuring and 
> reform for the
> Japanese economy, except the provincial banks would be the 
> postal savings
> and JA credit cooperatives.
> 
> http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/01september/sep01toc.html
> 
> Downsizing, Privatization, Labor Flexibility, Wage Cuts:  
> Selected Summaries
> of IMF/World Bank Country Policies
> 
> Argentina
> ·World Bank sector support for a massive and 
> ambitiousprivatization program
> of local water systems
> ·Nearly half of provincial government-owned enterprises have been
> privatized, including a majority of provincial banks
> ·In 1994 the pay-as-you-go pension system was replaced by a mixed
> public/private pensions system
> ·In 1999 new laws were passed to enhance labor flexibility
> ·for small and medium sized enterprises, lengthen the 
> probation period for
> new workers, employer contributions to social security have 
> been reduced
> 

RE: Midldle East conspiracy theory

[michael pugliese]

   Yup, Karl, the essence and appearence of the ME realities
are so totally upended and discordent. (Hope you take your vitamin
supplements. I take lotsa to keep my Irony Supply Fully Loaded.)
   So, Sharon really wants to save Arafat so Yassir can implement
a neo-colonial diktat for his Zionist masters after the entire
apparatus undernath Arafat imn the PA which would be in charge
of repressing the Palestinian masses after the IDF slaughters
and/or imprisons as many militants as it can grab.
   Meanwhile, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah over the
border in Lebanon are the most likely winners of the insane policy
of Sharon and the U.S.I don't believe in conspiracy theories
(though heh, if I did, on  the Middle East, you should the extensive
book by Rightist, Daniel Pipes on Conspiracy Theories in the
Middle East!)
but, if I did, I'd say that Sharon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad
are in this deadly symbiosis that will lead to more and more
escalation benefitting neither the long term interests of the
Palestinians or the Isrealis.
Michael Pugliese

>--- Original Message ---
>From: Karl Carlile <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: PEN-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: 4/3/02 1:51:50 AM
>

>
>- Original Message -
>From: "Karl Carlile" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Communism List:
>http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
>Workers of the world unite!
>___
>Concerning the Middle East a specific conspiracy theory may
be valid:
>
>Israeli forces have surrounded and stripped Arafat down. Given
that Arafat's
>popularity had been declining and that he has been  fast becoming
a figure
>who carried little cred Sharon may be actually (deliberately)
turning him
>into a heroic figure holding out in his bunker in the eyes of
the
>Palestinian masses. Sharon may be actually intending to save
Arafat
>political and even physical life. By surrounding he may also
protecting him
>from an Islamic assassin squad.
>At the same time the aggressive military exercise being undertaken
by Sharon
>is intended to flush out, destroy and capture the more militant
intifada
>activists including its leaders. In so far as Israel successfully
achieves
>this aim of crushing or at least seriously defeating the militant
intifida
>network it has also successful disposed of Arafat's competitors
even rivals
>for power.
>In the aftermath the Palestinian masses will be more demoralised
while
>Arafat will emerge as the redeemed leader whose status in the
eyes of the
>Palestinians will have recovered significantly.
>Under these conditions Arafat will be in a much stronger position
to
>copper-fasten a sell out to the Israeli state with less fear
of its being
>upended and his being assassinated. Under these conditions too
Sharon or his
>ilk will be, from a position of victory, in a much stronger
position to have
>the freedom to manouevre and negotiate an effective settlemement.
>Arafat may even know of this plan.
>
>Please forward this posting to other mailing lists and to newsgroups
>
>---
>Click below to access Communism List site:
>http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
>Yours etc.,
>Karl Carlile
>
>
>
>Click below to access Communism List site:
>http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
>Yours etc.,
>Karl Carlile
>
>
>Communism List ___
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>

RE: Speaking of What's Left

[michael pugliese]

   I cheated! Googing away...The below was published in Crossroads,
a journal that was an attempt from (mostly) ex-Line of March
and CofC to dialogue with the broad left.
"Market Leftism: Money, Machines and the Left's Decline"

Nathan Newman and Anders Schneiderman connect the proliferation
of "market leftist" organizations and the decline of progressive
politics...

   In the mid-90's, John Judis in Ther American Prospect wrote
a piece saying much the same. This piece is collected in, "Ticking
Time Bombs: The New Conservative Assaults on Democracy
Robert L. Kuttner, editor; published in conjunction with The
American Prospect. The New Press.
   Mark Dowie has a new book on Foundations from M.I.T. Press.
   The Nation - Selected Feature
 Selected Feature Why Do Progressive Foundations Give Too Little
To Too Many? By Michael H. Shuman  The National Committee for
Responsive Philanthropy recently reported that between 1992 and
1994, twelve major foundations on the right, often working in
concert, pumped more than $200 million ...
http://past.thenation.com/issue/980112/0112shum.htm 
Michael Pugliese

>--- Original Message ---
>From: Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: 4/3/02 6:52:17 AM
>

> Speaking of What's Left
>by Ian Murray
>02 April 2002 15:44 UTC  
>
>
>
>===
>
>Please count the young people for us :
>
>Today, "the left"
>is really a professional apparatus of leaders, a fundraising
>machine, and mailing lists that no one bothers to mobilize.
>Instead of establishing a human relationship, a phone call
>or a door-knock or a letter from a progressive group is
>almost always just a way to raise money. As a result, more
>and more young people are refusing to even answer their
>doors or phones when political groups call -- which isn't
>often, because young people can't make large contributions
>of cash that attract contact by progressive organizations.
> Market leftism gives young
>activists and the rest of the left the same kind of
>"choices" that the "free market" offers us for getting where
>we want to go. We can "choose" between several brands of
>(used) cars; we just can't choose to build a better system
>of mass transit.
> The only people who really get to "choose" the
>direction the left takes are the big money foundations and
>governments. A few years ago, Michael Albert at Z Magazine
>estimated that progressive organizations have raised an
>impressive $1 billion in the last 25 years. But because the
>left is so fragmented, progressives don't really control
>this capital. Instead, many progressive organizations are
>dependent on foundation and government money. In a sense,
>the foundations and governments are the venture capitalists
>of the left -- and that venture capital can dry up when
>foundation or government elite fads change or when groups
>get too radical.
> So what should our generation of young activists make
>of this undemocratic disaster? We could just blame it on the
>power-hungry, graying activists who find it more comfortable
>to run their own small bureaucracy than participate in a
>broader movement. But that's too easy an answer. The present
>mess is a result of the efforts of another generation of
>young activists who fought for democracy and youth
>participation. We need to understand their struggles to
>understand what we need to go today.
> The Sixties youth rejected the centralized,
>bureaucratic democratic decision-making of the unions,
>parties, and the established civil rights organizations (the
>legacy of another generation of young activists). Instead,
>organizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
>and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
>believed in the ideal of engaged "participatory democracy. "
>They believed this was more likely to occur in smaller, more
>decentralized organizations where everyone could "do their
>own thing." These smaller groups would also allow young
>people to overcome the racism, sexism, imperialism, and
>other shortcomings of the older, top-down organizations who
>refused to respond to growing demands from the grassroots.
> In the 1970s, the attitudes of SDS/SNCC, the women's
>movement, and the new environmental ethic of "small is
>beautiful" converged with the lawyer/lobbyist-driven
>Naderite activism and the community organizing gospel of
>Saul Alinsky. These ideas would spawn an explosion of
>organizations, by some estimates leading to a total of as
>many as two million citizen groups encompassing 15 million
>people by the 1980s. Since many organizations were too small
>to support themselves through their members, they relied on
>assistance from the government and foundations.  They
>gradually became professionalized, and the goal of
>democratic participation went by the wayside.
> In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected -- in no small part
>because decentralized progressive groups could not unite to
>effectively oppose him. Under Reagan a

On terrorism

[Charles Brown]

On terrorism
by miychi
03 April 2002 12:24 UTC  < < < 


On 2002.04.03 08:13 AM, "Seyed Javad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


What is terror? What is terrorism? Who is a terrorist? These and many such
questions have been in one


-clip-


 In current
situation, especially Mid-East crisis, are there meaning of distinction
between terrorism and war or other forms of armed struggle such as Colombia
or Nepal rebel?
In 9-11, I thought US suffer for its massive global terrorism, for example,
Korea war, Vietnam war, intervention to Chili coup d'etat,
Intervention to Nicaraguan revolution, El-salvador, Gulf war ,Kosovo, Afghan
war ,intervention to Phillipine, Colombia,etc.
US is in reality top of terrorist country, but Bush declare war against
terrorism,it is highly ridiculous.




Charles: What you say here is very true , Miyachi.  War is terrorism on the largest 
scale.  The U.S. has and uses the largest war/terror machine in the history of 
humanity. It is the U.S. that is the worst purveyor of terror in the world today. The 
best way the U.S. could fight terrorism is to demobilize its armed forces. That would 
be the biggest blow terrorism ever received.








Against Global credit capital system, wide range of social movement
develops. In the process violent, radical,armed, movement may happen. I
think that we may not better determine in advance form of tactics,or
movement. If determined, people's power can't appear fully, in contrary
restricted. Forms of struggle are many. For example Jihad is religious forms
of global class struggle and Jihad admit terrorism. Who can accuse this?
MIYACHI TATSUO
Psychiatric Department
Komaki municipal hosipital
1-20.JOHBUHSHI
KOMAKI CITY
AICHI 

: We are what's left

[Charles Brown]

: We are what's left
by Forstater, Mathew
02 April 2002 18:21 UTC  

clip-

Now, there is no doubt that in the TMS, Smith explicitly criticized
those who view self-interest as the source of all 'affections and
sentiments' as
suffering from 'some confused misapprehension of the system of
sympathy.' 
And that, for Smith, 'sympathy' (what we today call empathy) is the
"effective cement of society".  So, if one argues that self-interest is
the prime motivator for Smith in the WN, then they must be arguing for
the old 'Das Adam Smith problem'--that the two works are inconsistent.

-clip-

Macfie, argues that when Smith's notion of empathy is combined with the
reason of the 'impartial spectator' (something like 'conscience'), the
result is a "rational sympathy" (or "sympathetic reason"), from which
arise the social codes and rules of behavior necessary if "*proper* self
regard" is to benefit the community.




CB: Could the "impartial spectator" and the institutions creating the social rules and 
codes of behavior include  holistic overall planners and coordinators of the social 
and economic whole, within Smith's conception ? What is to be done about the anarchy 
of production that results from the pursuit of self-interested behavior ? In other 
words , the proposition that self-interested behavior results in some socially 
desirable outcomes , does not contradict the proposition that self-interested behavior 
simultaneously results in socially undesirable outcomes, such as lack of fit between 
supply and demand, mass poverty  etc.  That " it ( is not) always the
worse for the society that it was no part of it ", many times society is the worst for 
not being part of the decisions.  What about organizing society holistically to take 
care of these,limit self-interested behavior's anti-social consequences ? Would Smith 
oppose this dreaded "centralized" planning, or planning from the "center of the circle 
"  ?




The analysis goes on... The upshot is that self-interested behavior
*may*
result in socially desirable outcomes *if* it is moderated by
self-control
and socially responsible adherence to other social rules and codes of
behavior (Smith's 'self-command' and 'sense of duty'). Thus, the _Theory
of Moral Sentiments_ lays out the institutional framework necessary for
a
'society of perfect liberty' (not to be confused with perfect
competition) and the _Wealth of Nations_ assumes that framework in its
discussion of the 'self-interested' economic actor. In Heilbroner's
terms, TMS is about the 'socialization of the individual' and WN is
about the consequences of socialized individual action within the
institutional framework of a 'society of perfect liberty'. Excessive
greed is socially undesirable. As a NY Times piece put it a couple years
ago, "Adam Smith ain't no Gordon Gekko."


-Original Message-
From: Max Sawicky [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 9:51 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:24575] RE: Re: Re: RE: Re: We are what's left

"But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and
it
is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be
more
likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and
show
them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires
of
them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do
this.
Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is
the
meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain
from
one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in
need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or
the
baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own
interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their
self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their
advantages."

"By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he
intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a
manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his
own
gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible
hand to
promote an end which was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own
interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually
than
when he really intends to promote it."

Bureaucracy

[Charles Brown]

Open Bureaucracy vs Bureacracy behind a Screen of Participatory
democracy.

Carrol



CB: Isn't "bureaucracy" a Weberian and not Marxist concept ? "Bureaucracy" is 
comparable to "middle class" in the damage it has done to the political consciousness 
of masses of workers and petit bourgeoisie, peasants. 

"Office workers" is a more accurate category for some purposes. Sitting at a bureau or 
desk does not cause some specific political phenomenon to occur.

When a "giant bureaucracy" is mentioned, I get this picture of an enormous collection 
of people sitting at desks in office buildings. HOWEVER,  it is not this 
bureau-proletariat of secretaries, clerks, mailboys, receptionists, beancounters, etc. 
that is the "cratic" , the power in either Russia or the New Deal, or any government. 
This mass of deskclerks is not the cause of "redtape" or anti-democratic rule from 
above, as if they took a vote among the vast bureaucracy to exercise its power on 
major questions before whatever institution with whatever bureaucracy.  "Bureaucracy" 
is a very misleading concept that is rife in liberal political analysis.

 Perhaps the kernel of truth in this demogogy is the hierarchy in "bureaucracy" . In 
other words, the bosses of the bureausitters, the "cracy' of the bureaucsitters not 
the bureausitters en masse.  It's the SMALLNESS of the bureacracy at the top that is 
the problem. We want a big bureaucracy, in the sense of masses people having the power 
and control over society and their lives. 

Speaking of What's Left

[Charles Brown]

 Speaking of What's Left
by Ian Murray
02 April 2002 15:44 UTC  



===

Please count the young people for us :

Today, "the left"
is really a professional apparatus of leaders, a fundraising
machine, and mailing lists that no one bothers to mobilize.
Instead of establishing a human relationship, a phone call
or a door-knock or a letter from a progressive group is
almost always just a way to raise money. As a result, more
and more young people are refusing to even answer their
doors or phones when political groups call -- which isn't
often, because young people can't make large contributions
of cash that attract contact by progressive organizations.
... Market leftism gives young
activists and the rest of the left the same kind of
"choices" that the "free market" offers us for getting where
we want to go. We can "choose" between several brands of
(used) cars; we just can't choose to build a better system
of mass transit.
 The only people who really get to "choose" the
direction the left takes are the big money foundations and
governments. A few years ago, Michael Albert at Z Magazine
estimated that progressive organizations have raised an
impressive $1 billion in the last 25 years. But because the
left is so fragmented, progressives don't really control
this capital. Instead, many progressive organizations are
dependent on foundation and government money. In a sense,
the foundations and governments are the venture capitalists
of the left -- and that venture capital can dry up when
foundation or government elite fads change or when groups
get too radical.
 So what should our generation of young activists make
of this undemocratic disaster? We could just blame it on the
power-hungry, graying activists who find it more comfortable
to run their own small bureaucracy than participate in a
broader movement. But that's too easy an answer. The present
mess is a result of the efforts of another generation of
young activists who fought for democracy and youth
participation. We need to understand their struggles to
understand what we need to go today.
 The Sixties youth rejected the centralized,
bureaucratic democratic decision-making of the unions,
parties, and the established civil rights organizations (the
legacy of another generation of young activists). Instead,
organizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
believed in the ideal of engaged "participatory democracy. "
They believed this was more likely to occur in smaller, more
decentralized organizations where everyone could "do their
own thing." These smaller groups would also allow young
people to overcome the racism, sexism, imperialism, and
other shortcomings of the older, top-down organizations who
refused to respond to growing demands from the grassroots.
 In the 1970s, the attitudes of SDS/SNCC, the women's
movement, and the new environmental ethic of "small is
beautiful" converged with the lawyer/lobbyist-driven
Naderite activism and the community organizing gospel of
Saul Alinsky. These ideas would spawn an explosion of
organizations, by some estimates leading to a total of as
many as two million citizen groups encompassing 15 million
people by the 1980s. Since many organizations were too small
to support themselves through their members, they relied on
assistance from the government and foundations.  They
gradually became professionalized, and the goal of
democratic participation went by the wayside.
 In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected -- in no small part
because decentralized progressive groups could not unite to
effectively oppose him. Under Reagan and Bush, the federal
government "defunded the left" and many foundations followed
suit. As a result, the 1980s would demonstrate the limits of
participation without mass democracy.
 With little ability to coordinate comprehensive
campaigns, each group had to retreat more and more to single
issues to maintain its funding ability. Vibrant democratic
community organizations might continue to exist at the local
level, but the dreams of a national upswell of
"participatory democracy" had given way to an alphabet soup
of competing non-profits and an alientated membership.

TOWARD GRASSROOTS MOBILIZATION

 So what are we to do?
 Our generation needs to bring together the ideals of
two previous generations: the 1930s ideals of solidarity in
one movement -- "the One Big Union" -- and the Sixties ideal
of full participation by everyone in "the movement." We live
in a world where police brutality, the lack of jobs, the
collapse of the educational system, racism, sexism,
homelessness, attacks on immigrants, and international
economic blackmail are too closely intertwined to split into
five contribution checks each month or 20 disconnected
meetings each week. But we also have to fight for the ideal
of grassroots democracy in all aspects of a unified
movement, the ability of minority views 

Re: Lots of 'goodwill' lost over those accounting changes

[Tom Walker]

I'm engaged in corporate research on another Andersen client with former
Andersen accountants in top management positions. This company has all sorts
of cross-boundary vertical integration (master service agreements,
acquisition of subsidiaries) with several other corps also loaded with
former AAs. The scent I pick up is of a huge multi-corporate cartel held
together by its common "independent auditor". What is the meaning of
independent?

Charles Januzzi wrote:

"One thing interesting is just how intimately connected Andersen is to the
Waste Management corporate structure..."

Tom Walker
604 255 4812

On terrorism

[miychi]

On 2002.04.03 08:13 AM, "Seyed Javad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


What is terror? What is terrorism? Who is a terrorist? These and many such
questions have been in one

Clausewitz define that war is continuance of politics. If so, in may be
possible to say that terrorism is continuance of war.
In 9-11. I was asked how about it? I answered Very welcome. I can't never
forget Palestine children ware delighted by terrorist attack
 news. Although if Laden is merchant of terrorism, I welcomed. In current
situation, especially Mid-East crisis, are there meaning of distinction
between terrorism and war or other forms of armed struggle such as Colombia
or Nepal rebel?
In 9-11, I thought US suffer for its massive global terrorism, for example,
Korea war, Vietnam war, intervention to Chili coup d'etat,
Intervention to Nicaraguan revolution, El-salvador, Gulf war ,Kosovo, Afghan
war ,intervention to Phillipine, Colombia,etc.
US is in reality top of terrorist country, but Bush declare war against
terrorism,it is highly ridiculous.
Against Global credit capital system, wide range of social movement
develops. In the process violent, radical,armed, movement may happen. I
think that we may not better determine in advance form of tactics,or
movement. If determined, people's power can't appear fully, in contrary
restricted. Forms of struggle are many. For example Jihad is religious forms
of global class struggle and Jihad admit terrorism. Who can accuse this?
MIYACHI TATSUO
Psychiatric Department
Komaki municipal hosipital
1-20.JOHBUHSHI
KOMAKI CITY
AICHI 

Midldle East conspiracy theory

[Karl Carlile]

- Original Message -
From: "Karl Carlile" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Communism List:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Workers of the world unite!
___
Concerning the Middle East a specific conspiracy theory may be valid:

Israeli forces have surrounded and stripped Arafat down. Given that Arafat's
popularity had been declining and that he has been  fast becoming a figure
who carried little cred Sharon may be actually (deliberately) turning him
into a heroic figure holding out in his bunker in the eyes of the
Palestinian masses. Sharon may be actually intending to save Arafat
political and even physical life. By surrounding he may also protecting him
from an Islamic assassin squad.
At the same time the aggressive military exercise being undertaken by Sharon
is intended to flush out, destroy and capture the more militant intifada
activists including its leaders. In so far as Israel successfully achieves
this aim of crushing or at least seriously defeating the militant intifida
network it has also successful disposed of Arafat's competitors even rivals
for power.
In the aftermath the Palestinian masses will be more demoralised while
Arafat will emerge as the redeemed leader whose status in the eyes of the
Palestinians will have recovered significantly.
Under these conditions Arafat will be in a much stronger position to
copper-fasten a sell out to the Israeli state with less fear of its being
upended and his being assassinated. Under these conditions too Sharon or his
ilk will be, from a position of victory, in a much stronger position to have
the freedom to manouevre and negotiate an effective settlemement.
Arafat may even know of this plan.

Please forward this posting to other mailing lists and to newsgroups

---
Click below to access Communism List site:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Yours etc.,
Karl Carlile



Click below to access Communism List site:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/
Yours etc.,
Karl Carlile


Communism List ___
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Lots of 'goodwill' lost over those accounting changes

[Charles Jannuzi]

> I don't know how many of you might have come across the SEC news release
on
> the Waste Management fraud but I was flabbergasted by the purple prose.
I've
> never seen the phrase "ill-gotten gain" used so many times in a single
> document. See for yourselves

Gotta wonder what took the SEC so long, since all the fraud was obvious a
long time ago. I guess what with the decision to go for full exposure of AA
to show a clean up of the toxic waste in accounting there, they had to.I'm
not convinced it's an AA-only thing, since Waste Management seemed to be
able to coopt the legal professionals from the law firms they hired as
well.

One thing interesting is just how intimately connected Andersen is to the
Waste Management corporate structure (clipped and pasted from the SEC's list
of defendants in the filing):

26. James E. Koenig, age 54, is a resident of Wheaton, Illinois. Koenig was
the former executive vice president and CFO of Waste Management. In January
of 1997, Koenig was stripped of the CFO title because of mounting
shareholder discontent but thereafter continued to have responsibility for
financial, accounting, and reporting matters. Koenig commenced employment
with the Company in July of 1977, first became an officer in 1984, and
resigned on October 29, 1997. Koenig is a certified public accountant. Like
every CFO that preceded him, Koenig was trained as an auditor at Arthur
Andersen. Koenig signed Waste Management's periodic reports on Forms 10-K
and 10-Q and registration statements, as CFO, and participated in making
public statements concerning those reports.

27. Thomas C. Hau, age 66, is a resident of Crown Point, Indiana. Hau was
the vice president and corporate controller and CAO of Waste Management from
September 1990 to October 1997. Hau remained vice president until his
retirement on April 3, 1998. Hau is a certified public accountant. Like
every CAO that preceded him, Hau was trained as an auditor at Arthur
Andersen where he was a partner for thirty years. While at AA, Hau was the
partner in charge of the Waste Management audit from 1976 to 1983 (otherwise
referred to as the "engagement partner") and later became head of the AA
audit division that handled the Waste Management account. Hau was again
slotted to become engagement partner for the Waste Management audit in 1990
but resigned from AA after Buntrock invited him to join Waste Management. As
CAO, he among other things, prepared initial drafts of the financial
statement footnotes and Management's Discussion and Analysis section of the
Company's periodic reports. During all relevant times, Hau signed Waste
Management's annual reports on Form 10-K as the CAO.

29. Bruce D. Tobecksen, age 57, is a resident of The Woodlands, Texas.
Tobecksen was the vice president of finance until December of 1997, when he
was asked to leave by the new CFO of Waste Management. Prior to holding that
position, from 1987 to February of 1993, Tobecksen was CFO of Chemical Waste
Management, Inc., a subsidiary of Waste Management. Tobecksen is a certified
public accountant. Before joining Waste Management in 1979, he worked as an
audit manager at AA and during a portion of that time, worked on the Waste
Management audit. Tobecksen participated in the preparation of the
consolidated financial statements and disclosures included in the Company's
periodic reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q.

-
C. Jannuzi