date:20020614

- Original Message - 
From: "Ulhas Joglekar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "pen-l" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 7:23 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:26927] Leave the dollar alone

The Economic Times

Friday, June 14, 2002

Leave the dollar alone

Joseph Stiglitz

The "strong dollar" policy represents an especially egregious example of an
economic myth; it seems to suggest that the US treasury could, and would,
maintain the strong dollar, and that a strong dollar is good for the US.

When I was chairman of the President's council of economic advisers, I was
often asked if I supported the strong dollar policy. I replied that I
believed in an "equilibrium dollar." 

==

Hahahahahahahahaha

Leave the dollar alone

2002-06-14 Thread Ulhas Joglekar


The Economic Times

Friday, June 14, 2002

Leave the dollar alone

Joseph Stiglitz

IT is always risky to write about exchange rates. If a currency's exchange
rate is falling, it may well be rising by the time one's article appears.

But the issue of how we should think about exchange rates and their
appropriate management is a perennial one. So what is at issue now is not
just the falling dollar, but rather what US officials intend to do about it.

Paul O'Neill, the outspoken US treasury secretary, suggests that there is
little the US could or would do to sustain the dollar.

His remarks were criticised by some as abandoning the strong dollar policy
that was the Clinton Administration's hallmark. One responsibility of
economic leadership is to dispel economic myths - certainly not to create
them.

The "strong dollar" policy represents an especially egregious example of an
economic myth; it seems to suggest that the US treasury could, and would,
maintain the strong dollar, and that a strong dollar is good for the US.

When I was chairman of the President's council of economic advisers, I was
often asked if I supported the strong dollar policy. I replied that I
believed in an "equilibrium dollar." In other words, exchange rates are no
different from other prices.

Like the price of apples and oranges, market forces should determine them.
Anyone who says he believes in a "strong orange policy" would be ridiculed.

Yet some of those who seem to have the greatest faith in market forces treat
exchange rates as if they were governed by laws other than those of standard
economics, so that a word or even a look from a finance minister could lead
currencies to soar or plummet. Of course, there is considerable
irrationality in currency markets.

Keynes once described asset markets as beauty contests, in which the
objective is not to ascertain who is the most beautiful person, but whom
others will think is the most beautiful.

The objective in currency markets is, indeed, often to guess what others
will be thinking. But even if government intervention can affect exchange
rates in the short run, in the longer run, it is market fundamentals that
matter.

There may be a legitimate role for government in limiting excessive
volatility, but if underlying economic fundamentals do not drive the
exchange rate, what is the basis of our confidence in the market system?

Belief in misguided notions inevitably leads to further nonsense. On one
occasion, a reporter queried the US treasury on the adverse effects of the
strong dollar on exports (at the time, car sales and other exports were
suffering.)

The response was that the strong dollar meant a strong economy, and a strong
economy strengthens the ability to export. But of course, even the US
treasury, as powerful as it may be, cannot repeal the laws of economics.

Demand curves are downward sloping: typically, at higher prices, others will
demand less of Americana goods, and a strong dollar means that American
goods are more expensive.

Perhaps the most important objection to the strong dollar policy is that it
encourages precisely this confusion between a strong dollar and a strong
economy.

We should no more be emotionally attached to the exchange rate than to any
other price. A stronger exchange rate discourages exports, and when an
economy is facing rising unemployment, it can make a bad situation worse.

On the other hand, a higher exchange rate may also lead to lower inflation,
as import prices fall. When inflation is the primary concern, a strong
exchange rate may be good for the economy.

The strong dollar policy reeks of an economic nationalism that is out of
step with the era of globalisation. If the dollar is strong, then the euro
or the yen is weak. But how are political and economic leaders in other
countries to respond?

Should they simply agree to the strong dollar policy, even though it implies
a weak yen or euro policy?

What is required is a debate with the US, for the strong dollar has led to
an anomalous situation: the world's richest country seems unable to live
within its means and must continually borrow hundreds of billions of dollars
from abroad to finance its huge trade deficits.

The strong dollar - far more than Japanese protectionism - fuelled the
bilateral deficit with Japan. It also contributed to protectionism at home,
reflected in the new US steel tariffs.

It is high time that the nonsense of the strong dollar policy be laid to
rest. Paul O'Neill should be commended for helping in this effort.

Perhaps we can now begin to think more seriously about creating an
international economic system that acknowledges the devastating effects that
market volatility among major currencies has on less developed countries,
and that ensures greater stability.

For too long, we have blamed the victims. That has merely permitted us to
avoid taking a hard look at the system itself.

(The author is professor of economics and finance at Columbia University,
the w

Re: Re: Health Care Privatization (was firefighters)

2002-06-14 Thread Ken Hanly


Yes. I was looking for a specific critique of the Swedish reforms. The only
one I have been able to find deals with the effects of co-pays. I wish there
were a critque of the supposed efficiency of the new private hospitals as
well as an explanation why some unions favor privatisation. It is clear that
Canada wishes to use Sweden as a model for reform. The government sent
Romanow over to Sweden to study their system. Of course Sweden has a certain
reputation as a progressive welfare state model but for over a decade it has
been moving in  mostly reactionary directions although there were certainly
problems with the former health care system.
   Evans, Barer, Rachlis, and others have good material on the Canadian
situation.

Cheers, Ken Hanly


- Original Message -
From: "Tom Walker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 3:17 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:26913] Re: Health Care Privatization (was firefighters)


> I don't know if Ken Hanly was specifically looking for a critique of the
> Swedish health care privatization or more general. Here is a good one from
> Canada with several pages of references:
>
> http://www.chspr.ubc.ca/hpru/pdf/2000-3d.PDF
>
> Robert Evans, one of the authors of the above, may know of critiques of
the
> Swedish experience.
>
> The Hospital Employees Union website puts up a lot of good current stuff
on
> the B.C. privatization schemes:
>
> http://www.heu.org/
>
> (Disclosure: I do contract research work for them on the issue.)
>
> Tom Walker
> 604 255 4812
>

Re: A review of Brenner




Steve Diamond quoted Goldner:

> "It is only in the markets of the world that money acquires to the full
> extent the character of the commodity whose bodily form is also the
> immediate social incarnation of human labor in the abstract. Its real mode
> of existence in this sphere adequately corresponds to its ideal concept."
> (Capital, vol. 1, Part I, Chapter III,  Section 3c)

Now I see what you mean, Steve, that we must take the world as a whole into
account.  Certainly.

What Loren says next is close to my own view:

> Nevertheless, each epochal crisis represents, for the capitalist world (that
> part directly in the capital-wage labor relationship, a minority of the
> world's population in 1914 and still far from 100% today), a crisis of the
> OBSOLESCENCE of value (in this "manifold", after the collapse of the
> "apples" of 1938-1975 to the "oranges" of 1815-1914, or 1870-1914, or
> whatever); i.e. value, the contemporary cost of reproducing labor power can
> no longer be the "standard of exchange". Labor power becomes too productive
> to be contained in capitalist social relations. Devalorization has to occur
> to re-equilibrate the system for a new expansion at an acceptable rate of
> profit. That means ultimately massive destruction of the 1914-1945 type,
> even if it occurs in dispersed, atomized ways (the Lumpenization of 10-20%
> of the US population, the boom in prisons, etc.). Since 1965-1973,
> capitalism has been postponing any massive, abrupt devalorization of the
> 1929-1933 type with credit pyramids and a "slow crash landing", grinding
> down "the total social wage" slowly but surely. And that process is hardly
> over, as the events of August-September 1998 showed.

What follows is even closer to my view:

>  total price equals
> total value only at the beginning and end of a cycle. Along the way there is
> a constant puffing up of ficticious value which has to be supported by
> surplus value AND by inputs from outside the "closed system" (capitalists
> and wage laborers). These are, as indicated, the looting of non-capitalist
> classes (petty producers, shopkeepers, peasants), the running down of plant
> (sunk capital,  as Brenner calls it), the non-replacement of infrastructure,
> the non-reproduction of labor power at current levels of productivity, and
> the looting of nature (non-replacement of resources and the non-innovation
> of technology to draw on new resources). What Brenner rightly emphasizes as
> technodepreciation through increased labor productivity creates a ficticious
> increment "f" of fixed assets indistinguishable to capitalists (and
> "economists") and requiring ,  like all other claims on profit, interest and
> ground rent, an adequate rate of return.  Over time, this increment "f"
> becomes a "hot potato" that must be constantly thrown around until it
> collapses in a general deflation, bringing price back into congruence with
> current costs of reproduction.  Inside the capitalist production process,
> through  technodepreciation, this "hot potato" starts up as the
> capitalization of plant rendered wholly or partially obsolete by the advance
> of technology. Capitalist "net worth" is a multiplier of the cash flow from
> any given source of profit, interest or rent, and for long periods of time
> (once again, Penn Central, or LBO's) can have little to do with the "real"
> price-value relationship  To keep this growing balloon of hot air afloat,
> the system issues credit, which temporarily averts a deflation but which
> just makes the balloon bigger, as it begins to circulate outside the sphere
> of production.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

Re: Re: Re: Re: frappacinos and Brenner




Ian Murray wrote:

> Don't want to flog a dying concept here again, but it seems to me that
> value isn't observable *in a manner different from* the way k-mesons are
> unobservable. Namely the natural kind/social kind distinction on which
> many theories of Scientific Realism rest. Although we don't know
> position/momentum coordinates of k-mesons independent of our measurment
> strategy, that's different from the claim that they *exist* irrespective
> of whether we are measuring them.

excellent analogy.  I did not mean to disparage value theory.

> So perhaps what we need are contmporary explications and analysis of
> power and prices and the contexts of their determination and how they
> perpetuate class relations-dominations etc.

Yes, but I don't think that it is enough to work on that level.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Brenner

Title: RE: [PEN-L:26918] Re: RE: Re: RE: Brenner

I hope that the font of this message is readable. For totally unknown -- if not unknowable -- reasons, my e-mail program has been imposing micro-fonts on my messages. I apologize if this is unreadable. There are ways to make the print larger after received.

Gil writes: > With respect to Jim's comment, I've never, ever claimed any sort of unique validity for the analytical methodology of mainstream economics (featuring, I suppose, the notions of individual optimization and equilibrium or strategic consistency). I wonder if you could point to any published or unpublished statement of mine, Jim, that indicates the contrary.<

Then, I apologize for misrepresenting your viewpoint. However, if I remember correctly, you have rejected some Marxian propositions because they were not consistent with the strictures methodological individualism. But my memory is often wrong, especially as I enter my second half-century.

>Rather I've argued against the reverse fetish, involving the categorical rejection of theoretical results achieved within this framework on the ground that it is "un" or "non" or "anti" Marxist.<

I don't see why this point is relevant, since I for one have always agreed that just because something is non- or un- or anti-Marxist doesn't automatically make it wrong (cf. Keynes). Similarly, just because something is consistent with Marx doesn't make it true (since he made some important mistakes and never finished his theory, while sometimes writing in an obscure style).

Similarly, just because something fits with neoclassical methodology (methodological individualism, equilibrium, etc.) and is thus academically respectable doesn't make it automatically either right or wrong. Some NC propositions are totally true in a purely (deductive) logical sense, but are untrue when compared to empirical data.

>In this connection I would note that, so far as I can tell, no analytical claim of Marx's in _Capital_ depends on the premise that people don't optimize; or take market prices as given; or freely move among potential exchange partners; or other negations of putatively "neoclassical" assumptions. To the contrary, Marx sometimes explicitly *embraces* these conditions within the scope of his argument. <

*** Volume I of CAPITAL does not describe people's decision-making (except for assertions that capitalists lust for surplus-value and want to accumulate, which are basically just assertions); his analysis doesn't overlap with the NC vision, since his focus is not on individuals but on society-level social relations of production. Put another way, the mathematical framework of volume I is more like an ex post accounting framework than like the NC model, which purports to predict human behavior. In volume III, on the other hand, where he's dealing with people who act on the basis of the (fetishized) social environment that they see, it's very much consistent with individual optimization, especially profit maximization. He even uses the concept of opportunity cost (though not by name).

But "optimization" -- outside of profit-maximization -- is basically tautological (as a would-be suicide's act can be explained in terms of his preferences or expectations and is thus totally "rational" in the NC sense). Though much of Marx can be seen as consistent with optimization, there's no reason why we should force him into that framework. There are other ways to understand the world.

*** In volume I, Marx assumed that prices equaled values, but since he didn't deal with the process of individual decision-making, it's not like we can say that individuals "take market prices as given." In volume III, he doesn't really deal with monopoly, so we might use the given-prices assumption of perfect competition models if we feel obligated to do so. However, he doesn't assume that the economy is always in equilibrium, so the issue of who or what determines the prices comes up. Unlike Walrasians, he doesn't assume that there's a god-like Auctioneer to call out prices, or anything similar (such as instant tantonnement with no false trading). So some sort of monopoly (price-setting) power would exist. Also, in his discussions of forms of capital that existed before industrial capital (e.g., money-lending and merchant capital engaged in trade with putter-outers) it's hard to assume perfect competitive markets prevail, because the markets were much less organized (thinner) than during the era of industrial capital, while none of the conditions necessary for the existence of perfect competition were even close to being met. So the money and merchant capitalists would best be described as having monopoly and even monoposony power vis-à-vis the putter-outers. It would be quite a distortion to assume perfect competition, even as a first approximation.

Given the unreality of the take-prices-as-given assumption, there's no reason to force Marx into that framework. The only r

Re: Re: Frappacinos and the law of value: a reply to the Post review of Empire



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

> (1) cheapening the value of labor power by cheapening necessities
> consumed by workers:
>
> One way we could understand the link between cheaper coffee from
> Rwanda, etc. and lean production would be to analyze not only how
> cheaper coffee helps "resolve the profit squeeze on U.S. coffee
> buyers' cartel" (only a part of the story) but also how cheaper
> coffee, together with other cheaper goods and services necessary for
> reproduction of labor power (from foodstuff, clothes, oil, to other
> necessities), helps bring down the value of labor power, thus helping
> to squeeze more surplus value out of coffee-drinking workers all over
> the world.  That's what American workers should think about whenever
> they buy cheap coffee (more Folgers, General Foods, Maxwell than
> Starbucks -- ),
> cheap clothes, cheap anything: "My god, the value of my labor power
> is being cheapened," rather than, "My god, I found a great bargain!"
>
> (2) cheapening the conditions of labor (= industrial inputs,
> machinery, etc.) consumed in production processes:
>
> *   The increased profit received by a capitalist through the
> cheapening of, say, cotton and spinning machinery, is the result of
> higher labour productivity; not in the spinnery, to be sure, but in
> cotton cultivation and construction of machinery. It requires smaller
> outlays of the conditions of labour to incorporate a given quantity
> of labour, and hence to extract a given quantity of surplus-labour.
> The costs required to appropriate a certain quantity of
> surplus-labour diminish.
>
>

> *
>
> In short, looking at both the processes of production and
> reproduction, through the lens of value theory, we can better
> understand the workings of global capitalism.
> --
> Yoshie
>

=

Why not just say capitalists not only are compelled by competition but
also like to restrain/cut costs and will use whatever forms of power
they can get away with to do so unless workers fight back?

Ian

A review of Brenner

2002-06-14 Thread Steve Diamond


This review of Bob Brenner's NLR piece is the source for some of my thinking
about Post piece on Empire.  A longer piece by Loren Goldner called The
Remaking of the American Working Class is also useful as well as an earlier
piece called Conjuncture: World Capitalism Since the Collapse of the Bretton
Woods System.  The URL is: http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/

I don't agree entirely with Loren's views nor with many specifics, but his
world accumulation framework is very useful.  It should be noted that
Brenner has apparently accomodated some of these criticisms in the new book.

"Total Capital" Rigor and International Liquidity: A Reply to Robert Brenner
by Loren Goldner

"It is only in the markets of the world that money acquires to the full
extent the character of the commodity whose bodily form is also the
immediate social incarnation of human labor in the abstract. Its real mode
of existence in this sphere adequately corresponds to its ideal concept."
(Capital, vol. 1, Part I, Chapter III,  Section 3c)

Robert Brenner ("The Economics of Global Turbulence", New Left Review #229,
May-June 1998) has written a plausible Marxist economic history of the
post-Marshall Plan world. This in itself is no mean achievement. It would of
course be a trifle demagogic to say that events since the appearance of this
piece are the best lead into the flaws of his analysis. I did not foresee
them either,  except in the "broken clock that's right twice a day" sense,
and in "economics" (i.e. the critique of political economy, as Marx called
it) timing is everything. But this crisis, like every major capitalist
crisis in which depression emerges as the "uninvited guest", brings to the
fore the question of international liquidity which is not central enough to
Brenner's piece, nor to most Marxist attempts to analyze the world economy
since the creation of the Bretton Woods system, and and its post-1973
demise.

My gut reaction to Brenner's piece is that I may be the last
"debt-deflation" Marxist crisis theorist.  There's wonderful material here;
it saves others, myself included,  the trouble of reading a lot of the
mainstream literature of the "dismal science",  and has lots of useful
statistics. Brenner basically gets the chronology right. His analysis of the
1965-1973 outbreak of world crisis perfectly encapsulates (though this is
not his intent) the period of "New Left" euphoria, largely predicated in the
very same years on the "irrelevance" of "economic issues".   Brenner shows
persuasively how each "recovery" after the end of the postwar boom (71-73,
75-79, 82-90, 92-??) was more superficial than the preceding one. I agree
with Brenner's attacks on the supply siders and "wage push" theorists-- as
far as they go. But one could very nearly get the impression, reading this
piece, that, for Brenner, unlike for Marx (cf. Capital, vol. III, sections
IV and V) finance is purely secondary : a "veil", as it is treated by
mainstream economics, not an autonomous destructive force in its own right.
Brenner does make many points I would make, i.e. 1) the history of the
unraveling of Bretton Woods, 2) the great ficticious component of post-1979
investment (LBOs, etc.) 3) the rapid increase in FIRE (finance- insurance-
real estate) investments 4) the increasing disconnect between the stock
market and the real economy, 5) the impact of the fluctuations of the dollar
on other countries. But-- and this is a major diveregence-- Brenner doesn't
draw a systematic link between the process of devalorization in manufacture
("technodepreciation") through increased productivity,  and the
international financial system.

What follows is something between a critique of Brenner's piece, and a
series of criticisms. Something about Brenner's piece reads like a Marxist
version of an OECD report, which winds up inadvertently making things sound
better than they really are. Reading it, taking only the case of the U.S., I
don't see devastated ex-industrial regions and cities, armies of homeless
people, almost 1% of the population in the prison system, and increasing
numbers of working-class families squeaking by with 3-4 "MacJobs".

As a general introduction, I register my (mild) consternation at the
absence--in a critique of "wage push" theories of the crisis-- of a
discussion of actual Marxian value theory. I agree, as I said, with
Brenner's attacks on the supply siders and the wage push people. But I don't
think it's enough-- though it's very important, and rare-- to show the
source of the crisis of accumulation in the technodepreciation process. Our
task as Marxists is, after all, to determine the nature of the epoch.  An
epoch is defined by what preceded it and what will follow it. To set the
stage for an analysis of the post-war boom, Brenner would probably agree
that it is possible to see 1914-1945 as one protracted crisis. It broke the
logjam that arose in 1870-1914 as the U.S. and Germany arrived at and
surpassed Britain's real economic leve

Re: Frappacinos and the law of value: a reply to the Post review ofEmpire

2002-06-14 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi


At 4:04 PM -0700 6/12/02, Steve Diamond wrote about:
>lean production model to explain globalization

>Sociologist David Smith has written about the impact that U.S. backing of
>the coffee buyers' cartel (centered in the US) against "high" coffee prices
>had on countries like Rwanda.  His careful research demonstrates that the
>IMF then forced the Rwandans to impose a coercive labor regime to squeeze
>more production out of overworked coffee fincas to make up for lost profits
>and government revenues.  Hence, cheaper coffee from Rwanda helped resolve
>the profit squeeze on U.S. coffee buyers.   The result was a social revolt
>that the government eventually suppressed through the 1994 genocide.  Only
>an analysis which examines the global process of value creation and
>destruction in all its complexity can account for today's capitalism.  Think
>about that next time you order a frappacino at the local Starbucks.


(1) cheapening the value of labor power by cheapening necessities 
consumed by workers:

One way we could understand the link between cheaper coffee from 
Rwanda, etc. and lean production would be to analyze not only how 
cheaper coffee helps "resolve the profit squeeze on U.S. coffee 
buyers' cartel" (only a part of the story) but also how cheaper 
coffee, together with other cheaper goods and services necessary for 
reproduction of labor power (from foodstuff, clothes, oil, to other 
necessities), helps bring down the value of labor power, thus helping 
to squeeze more surplus value out of coffee-drinking workers all over 
the world.  That's what American workers should think about whenever 
they buy cheap coffee (more Folgers, General Foods, Maxwell than 
Starbucks -- ), 
cheap clothes, cheap anything: "My god, the value of my labor power 
is being cheapened," rather than, "My god, I found a great bargain!"

(2) cheapening the conditions of labor (= industrial inputs, 
machinery, etc.) consumed in production processes:

*   The increased profit received by a capitalist through the 
cheapening of, say, cotton and spinning machinery, is the result of 
higher labour productivity; not in the spinnery, to be sure, but in 
cotton cultivation and construction of machinery. It requires smaller 
outlays of the conditions of labour to incorporate a given quantity 
of labour, and hence to extract a given quantity of surplus-labour. 
The costs required to appropriate a certain quantity of 
surplus-labour diminish.


 
*

In short, looking at both the processes of production and 
reproduction, through the lens of value theory, we can better 
understand the workings of global capitalism.
-- 
Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: 

* Anti-War Activist Resources: 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine:

Re: Re: Re: frappacinos and Brenner

- Original Message -
From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 2:33 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:26916] Re: Re: frappacinos and Brenner

> A couple of thoughts.
>
> 1. Value production is unobservable.  What we see are prices.

=

Don't want to flog a dying concept here again, but it seems to me that
value isn't observable *in a manner different from* the way k-mesons are
unobservable. Namely the natural kind/social kind distinction on which
many theories of Scientific Realism rest. Although we don't know
position/momentum coordinates of k-mesons independent of our measurment
strategy, that's different from the claim that they *exist* irrespective
of whether we are measuring them.

The same cannot be said of social kinds. Their very existence is a
matter of individual and group belief in and action with them; a form of
self-fulfilling prophecy so to speak. To infer otherwise is to hold to
some variant of "objective idealism" of a neo-Platonic or neo-Husserlian
variety. What Thomas Nagel calls 'the view from nowhere.'

If we have no decision procedure agreeable to all members of a community
of inquirers as to whether a concept refers to some social kind
irrespective of some members belief in that social kind, we are likely
to be caught in an infinite loop of undecideability that ends up in
counterproductive acrimony. The very drift towards acrimony should be
telling us something important as to the origins of that infinite loop
and whether the desire of some to continue to hold on to the use of the
concept will allow the community of enquirers to do productive work in
understanding and explaining causation in social systems.

> 2. The prices are strongly affected by power/social relationships.
When I
> was young, most professional athletes had to take on jobs during the
> off-season.  College presidents were paid little more than professors.
We
> all know about the corporate president/hourly worker salary
differentials.

===

So perhaps what we need are contmporary explications and analysis of
power and prices and the contexts of their determination and how they
perpetuate class relations-dominations etc.

>
> 3. From the very beginning of the coffee fad, powerful nations moved
> coffee plants around to lower its price.  What happened in Vietnam was
old
> hat.  Even Darwin was involved in such genetic theft.
>
> 4. Low paid Rawandan farm workers get screwed just like the farm
workers
> in this country.  Labor is moved around in order to get maximimum
> advantage.
>
> 6. Human capital explanations seem to have no validity.

=

Re: 6; precisely because they leave out power, domination, covetousness
etc. and all the other aspects of human behavior we like to claim are
counter to the aspirations of civilized societies.

Ian

Re: RE: Re: RE: Brenner

2002-06-14 Thread Gil Skillman


Re this portion of the recent exchange on Brenner between Justin and
Jim:
(Justin:)
>When I say Marx officially regards certan phenomena as
surface, I means that when he talks value theory. he suggests that thesea
re in need of value theoretical explanation. As Gil Skillman has (to my
mind but not yours) shown, there is another strain in Marx that does not
require invocation of value theory, what Gil calls historical materialist
explanation. ... <

(Jim:)
I still wonder about
this word "official." If anyone is pushing the idea of
"official" views, it's Gil, since he seems to want us to apply
only the official methodology of the hegemonic school of economics, i.e.,
the methodological individualism of neoclassical economics (including
game theory). (For something to be "official," there has to be
an officialdom. The NC economics hierarchy is the most obvious
officialdom among economists, rewarding those who toe the line (use the
methodology, agree with the main propositions) with publication and
tenure and punish those who disagree.) Gil, please correct me if I'm
wrong in my impression of your methodological slant. 

With respect to Justin's comment, I've actually argued something
stronger:  not only is value theory *unnecessary* to ground any of
Marx's valid substantive claims (concerning, e.g., the systemic basis for
exploitation, or the role of labor power commodification, with or without
the subsumption of labor under capital, in the process of capitalist
exploitation), but Marx's use of value theory (in K.I, in particular) is
in fact *counterproductive* to his explicit analytical purposes, since it
obscures both the systemic basis of capitalist exploitation and the
significance of the distinction between labor power and labor in the
process of capitalist exploitation. 
I should quickly add that these are *hindsight* judgments--that is, they
only become clear once you stand in the analytical terrain Marx first
established using his value theory.  So, for example, I'm not
denying that *Marx* found it necessary to use value theory as a
foundation to achieve his valid insights. 

With respect to Jim's comment, I've never, ever claimed any sort of
unique validity for the analytical methodology of mainstream economics
(featuring, I suppose, the notions of individual optimization and
equilibrium or strategic consistency).  I wonder if you could point
to any published or unpublished statement of mine, Jim, that indicates
the contrary.  Rather I've argued against the reverse fetish,
involving the categorical rejection of theoretical results achieved
within this framework on the ground that it is "un" or
"non" or "anti" Marxist.  In this connection I
would note that, so far as I can tell, no analytical claim of Marx's in
_Capital_ depends on the premise that people don't optimize; or take
market prices as given; or freely move among potential exchange partners;
or other negations of putatively "neoclassical"
assumptions.  To the contrary, Marx sometimes explicitly *embraces*
these conditions within the scope of his argument. 

Jim comments further
When Marx says
"that surface phenomena are in need of value-theoretic
explanation" (which is, in my view, an accurate portrayal of his
views), he's saying that we can't simply look at supply and demand and
other microphenomena (prices, individual profits, etc.) We have to look
at them in the context set by the capitalist mode of production. In
modern lingo, he's saying we have to look at the macrofoundations of
microeconomics. If you look at just the prices, individual profits,
supply & demand, etc., as NC economists do, you end up suffering from
commodity fetishism.

I don't follow this argument.  On one hand, I don't see the basis
for the claim that "value-theoretic explanation" is tantamount
to providing "the macrofoundations of microeconomics." 
Why is it *necessary* to invoke Marx's value categories in order to
establish such foundations?  On the other hand, NC economists
*don't* "just look at the prices, individual profits, supply &
demand," any more than Marx does; these entities and magnitudes are
grounded in their analytical fundamentals, just as Marx claims to ground
these phenomena in value terms.  

Gil

Query

2002-06-14 Thread Carrol Cox


What is lean production theory?

Carrol

Re: Re: frappacinos and Brenner

A couple of thoughts.

1. Value production is unobservable.  What we see are prices.

2. The prices are strongly affected by power/social relationships.  When I
was young, most professional athletes had to take on jobs during the
off-season.  College presidents were paid little more than professors.  We
all know about the corporate president/hourly worker salary differentials.

3. From the very beginning of the coffee fad, powerful nations moved
coffee plants around to lower its price.  What happened in Vietnam was old
hat.  Even Darwin was involved in such genetic theft.

4. Low paid Rawandan farm workers get screwed just like the farm workers
in this country.  Labor is moved around in order to get maximimum
advantage.

6. Human capital explanations seem to have no validity.

On Fri, Jun 14, 2002 at 02:57:22PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> What happened to the Rwandan coffee growers sucks. But it hardly 
> demonstrates that the center of global accumulation isn't in the 
> First World, which is where most value production happens, it seems 
> to me. Can you find some other examples  that prove the contrary?

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: reply to Doug and Justin



>
>I take Justin's point about the diversity of views found in Solidarity and,
>of course, I know very little about the various internal debates and layers
>(since the organization, like so many left groups has very little
>transparency as far as I know).

Au contraire. Anyone can say anything. There is no line beyong no Democrats, 
are there are folks who are squishy on that.

I do know of Dan LaBotz's work, of course,
>but I do not think his work strays from the militant trade union view - he
>just transposes it to Mexico and Indonesia.

So what's your point? If the problem is that MTU leads you to ignore the 
Third World, Dan doesn't. And he's important in Soli.

And Labor Notes is a very
>significant part of Solidarity and it has an almost apolitical approach to
>problems facing labor

An odd view of a publication that struggles for independence politicala 
ction in the trade union movement.

(tho the latest issue debates the recent moves by
>organized labor to endorse Republicans!)

And criticizes it and a bad way to do indep political action.



  In any case you do seem to be
>admitting my point that lean production theory does suffer from certain
>critical limitations.
>

Sure. I'm pretty much a  Brennerite.

jks

>

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protest against trend in U.S. policy

Title: protest against trend in U.S. policy

We won't deny our consciences

Prominent Americans have issued this statement on the war on terror
Friday June 14, 2002
The Guardian [U.K.]

(signed by Laurie Anderson, Edward Asner, Russell Banks, Noam Chomsky, Ossie Davis, Mos Def, Eve Ensler, Martin Luther King III, Barbara Kingsolver, Tony Kushner, Edward Said, Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman, Howard Zinn, and 53 others.)

Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression. The signers of this statement call on the people of the US to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11 and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.

We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. We believe that all persons detained or prosecuted by the US government should have the same rights of due process. We believe that questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.

We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do - we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world.

We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage - even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City and, a generation ago, Vietnam. We too joined the anguished questioning of millions of Americans who asked why such a thing could happen.

But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of "good v evil" that was taken up by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression at home.

In our name, the Bush administration, with near unanimity from Congress, not only attacked Afghanistan but arrogated to itself and its allies the right to rain down military force anywhere and anytime. The brutal repercussions have been felt from the Philippines to Palestine. The government now openly prepares to wage all-out war on Iraq - a country which has no connection to the horror of September 11. What kind of world will this become if the US government has a blank cheque to drop commandos, assassins, and bombs wherever it wants?

In our name the government has created two classes of people within the US: those to whom the basic rights of the US legal system are at least promised, and those who now seem to have no rights at all. The government rounded up more than 1,000 immigrants and detained them in secret and indefinitely. Hundreds have been deported and hundreds of others still languish today in prison. For the first time in decades, immigration procedures single out certain nationalities for unequal treatment.

In our name, the government has brought down a pall of repression over society. The president's spokesperson warns people to "watch what they say". Dissident artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked, and suppressed. The so-called Patriot Act - along with a host of similar measures on the state level - gives police sweeping new powers of search and seizure, supervised, if at all, by secret proceedings before secret courts.

In our name, the executive has steadily usurped the roles and functions of the other branches of government. Military tribunals with lax rules of evidence and no right to appeal to the regular courts are put in place by executive order. Groups are declared "terrorist" at the stroke of a presidential pen.

We must take the highest officers of the land seriously when they talk of a war that will last a generation and when they speak of a new domestic order. We are confronting a new openly imperial policy towards the world and a domestic policy that manufactures and manipulates fear to curtail rights.

There is a deadly trajectory to the events of the past months that must be seen for what it is and resisted. Too many times in history people have waited until it was too late to resist.

President Bush has declared: "You're either with us or against us." Here is our answer: We refuse to allow you to speak for all the American people. We will not give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promi

Re: Health Care Privatization (was firefighters)

2002-06-14 Thread Tom Walker


I don't know if Ken Hanly was specifically looking for a critique of the
Swedish health care privatization or more general. Here is a good one from
Canada with several pages of references:

http://www.chspr.ubc.ca/hpru/pdf/2000-3d.PDF

Robert Evans, one of the authors of the above, may know of critiques of the
Swedish experience.

The Hospital Employees Union website puts up a lot of good current stuff on
the B.C. privatization schemes:

http://www.heu.org/

(Disclosure: I do contract research work for them on the issue.)

Tom Walker
604 255 4812

a falling dollar

Title: a falling dollar

A few days ago, there was a message on pen-l by Michael Roberts (see http://www.marxist.com/Economy/digging_a_deeper_hole.html) about the current state of the economy. I generally agreed with it (and I'm glad that he avoided the ursine analogies that I love). However, he assumed that the dollar would fall quickly, which would be disastrous. It's also possible, however, that the exchange rate of the dollar would fall slowly. The following analysis is useful, though I can't get behind it 100%.

Economist.com/June 8, 2002/FINANCE & ECONOMICS

A cliff-hanger

CURRENCY forecasters who have long predicted its decline have seen the dollar climb inexorably for years. At last it seems to be turning. Since February the dollar has fallen by 9% against the euro, to a 17-month low of $0.94. It has also hit a six-month low against the yen, of ¥123. It may well fall further over the coming year.

Two factors weigh against the dollar. First, it is by most yardsticks overvalued. Its trade-weighted level, adjusted for inflation differentials, remains well above its average over the past couple of decades. And second, America's large current-account deficit, at more than 4% of GDP and growing, looks unsustainable. If the dollar stays roughly where it is as the economy rebounds, then the deficit will grow. As a rule, once a country's external deficit approaches 5% of GDP, its currency tends to fall. [Further, U.S. interest rates have fallen relative to those of its major trading partners.]

To trigger a slide, foreign investors do not have to become net sellers of American assets. The dollar will fall if they merely reduce the pace at which they add to their holdings. It will fall even more if American investors continue or expand this year's buying of foreign assets, notably European equities.

Until recently, net capital inflows more than covered America's current-account deficit. Yet investors are now reassessing their expectations about future relative returns. Recent data appear to confirm that America's recovery is on track. Indeed, The Economist's latest poll of forecasters (see article) suggests that the American economy is again expected to outpace Western Europe and Japan this year.

Still, the part of this growth that finds its way into company profits is in greater doubt. America's productivity growth may have risen, but the fruits have so far gone mainly to workers and consumers, rather than to profits. And a growing band of investors guesses that higher potential returns now lie in Europe and Japan--so long as governments carry out reforms and firms continue to restructure.

Over the past year, America has had to rely more heavily on fickle short-term capital flows, into bonds and equities, in order to finance its current-account deficit. Figures from CSFB show that foreign direct investment financed 91% of America's current-account deficit in 1999. By last year the figure had fallen to only 43%; this year it has probably slipped further.

Currency complacency?

Most forecasters predict another fall in the dollar, but they generally expect it to be gradual and relatively painless--except, of course, for foreigners with large dollar holdings. For example, UBS Warburg expects the dollar to fall to $1.05 to the euro and to ¥115 by the end of 2003--a drop of around one-sixth from its peak earlier this year. George Magnus, the bank's chief economist, argues that a gradual fall in the dollar would benefit the world economy. It would underpin America's recovery, by helping to bolster exports, profits and investment. A stronger euro and yen would also intensify the pressure for structural reform and corporate restructuring in the euro area and Japan.

By helping to hold down inflation in Europe, a strong euro would also reduce the pressure on the European Central Bank (ECB) to raise interest rates. For Japan, however, a weaker dollar would be bad news, threatening to choke a nascent recovery. With interest rates already close to zero, the exchange rate is one of the few policy tools left for the Bank of Japan. GDP figures for the first quarter, due to be published on June 7th, are widely expected to show strong annualised growth of around 5%. However, Japan's GDP figures are notoriously volatile, many economists reckon that output will stumble again in the second quarter.

The Bank of Japan has intervened four times in the past two weeks in a bid to hold down the yen. Yet intervention rarely has much effect unless it is carried out jointly with other central banks. A new paper by Takatoshi Ito, an economist at the University of Tokyo, finds that joint intervention in the 1990s was 20-50 times more effective than intervention by the Bank of Japan alone. This time round, the Federal Reserve and the ECB are unlikely to join in, as both would be reasonably happy with a weaker dollar.

America's economy would certainly benefit from a moderate fall in the dollar. Some economists fret that this

Brenner, fini

Title: Brenner, fini





Justin writes: > Let's let this go, Jim, OK? <


Okay.


JD

reply to Doug and Justin

2002-06-14 Thread Steve Diamond


Doug, On the source and amount of value - I think it should at least be
considered an open question for research but I am not sure that my point is
dependent on the amount from the core as opposed to the so-called periphery
as much as the question of whether the core can survive without it - if the
latter is the case then it is vital to the system as a whole and to
political responses.  There is an interesting debate stimulated by Michael's
book on primitive accumulation on the new website run by Massimo de
Angelis - URL:
http://www.commoner.org.uk/#dEbAtE:%20on%20primitive%20accumulation  And I
am currently looking at the apparently growing use of coercion in labor
markets on a global basis (and this may explain my bias on this question).

I take Justin's point about the diversity of views found in Solidarity and,
of course, I know very little about the various internal debates and layers
(since the organization, like so many left groups has very little
transparency as far as I know).  I do know of Dan LaBotz's work, of course,
but I do not think his work strays from the militant trade union view - he
just transposes it to Mexico and Indonesia.  And Labor Notes is a very
significant part of Solidarity and it has an almost apolitical approach to
problems facing labor (tho the latest issue debates the recent moves by
organized labor to endorse Republicans!)  In any case you do seem to be
admitting my point that lean production theory does suffer from certain
critical limitations.


Stephen F. Diamond
School of Law
Santa Clara University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

reaction of stock prices to the WTO FSC case


http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~andreoni/302incidence.pdf

Re: frappacinos and Brenner



In any case, I would ask that if
>someone on the list - like Justin - says my views are mistaken that they
>explain how - instead of just making what amounts to, well, a gratuitous
>swipe!

I said more than that> I said that therewas little, substantively, that you 
said that Kim Moody or anyone in Soli would differ with.

>

>
>I think it is clear that a lean production theory sustains the "militant
>trade union" core of LN/Solidarity politics


Nah. The folks that believe in that--a minority of Soli--think so because 
they believe in the old IS line taht the industrial working class is the 
lever of the class struggle fulcrum that can move the world. Most of the 
comrades haven't heard of lean production theory and couldn't care about it. 
And all of them are fiercely internationalist!

and so it is hardly gratuitous
>to discuss the link between the two.  Why?  Because it ignores how the law
>of value operates at a global level - even in (perhaps particularly harshly
>in) remote regions like the hard scrabble Rwandan coffee fincas.
>Incorporating the way in which a kind of "primitive accumulation" (defined
>as absorbing new value into the system at below reproduction costs) 
>operates
>to sustain they global economy seems particularly important.  In doing so,
>though, one would then have to discuss what impact that has on the 
>sysiphean
>struggle of trade unionism.

Have you looked at ATC lately? Is it your impression that we systematically 
ignore third world issues or denigrate their importance for understanding 
first world trade union struggles? Or that Kim Moodt does for that matter? 
Or Dan LaBotz--who is about as hard line a syndalistist LN-Soli typeas there 
is, and who has written more books on Mexico and Indonesia than most is us 
here have been to either country ever?

jks

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Re: RE: Re: RE: Brenner



Let's let this go, Jim, OK? And thank's for the following:

>Yes, you are sitting on the shoulders of a giant, too. Like Moliere's
>bourgeois gentleman, you've been speaking prose for years without knowing
>it. You seem to have learned from Marx, but you don't like the way he
>developed or presented his ideas theoretically.
>

That's real big of you, fella. You seem to have learned something from Marx 
too, I'd say. Probably, anyway. Never can be too quick to commit, though.

jks

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Re: coffee cartel again

2002-06-14 Thread Eugene Coyle

This makes it sound as if a price adjustment over time would raise
demand enough to make things work for poorer countries.  But coffee
prices are so low that in certain countries -- in Central America for
example -- it doesn't pay to harvest the crop.  Hence workers get no
work, and then 

The World Bank's economists see this as an "opportunity."  People can
"choose" to do something else besides work on the coffee farms.

The Catholic Cardinal from Honduras -- touted as having a shot at being
the Pope -- will be in Sacramento next week to talk about organizing
around emmigration -- perhaps some of the coffee workers need to choose
to design computer chips.

Gene Coyle

Michael Perelman wrote:

> Rakesh passed on his thoughts about the cartel:
>
> Plunging coffee prices probably wouldn't have had such catastrophic
> effects if the short run price elasticity was not so low.  As Singer
> and Raffer argue (Economics of North South Divide, p. 132), prolonged
> troughs of coffee prices do not increase final demand strongly,
> because producer country shares, and thus their effects on consumer
> markets are small. Price reduction are usually not passed on
> immediately, as this would mean seeling stocks below the price at
> which they were bought. Intermediaries holding stocks have an
> interest in selling these before lowering their pirces. Income terms
> of trade must be expected to decline like prices in the short run. A
> long and pronounced price decline, though, is likely to increase
> demand, not least from poorer countries. Reactions by companies
> holding stocks will thus be asymmetric. While increasing prices
> quickly after commodity price increases means hefty additional
> profits from more cheaply bought stocks, "windfall losses" due to a
> price decline are usually avoided.
>
> --
>
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Chico, CA 95929
> 530-898-5321
> fax 530-898-5901

Re: frappacinos and Brenner

2002-06-14 Thread Doug Henwood


Steve Diamond wrote:

>I think it is clear that a lean production theory sustains the "militant
>trade union" core of LN/Solidarity politics and so it is hardly gratuitous
>to discuss the link between the two.  Why?  Because it ignores how the law
>of value operates at a global level - even in (perhaps particularly harshly
>in) remote regions like the hard scrabble Rwandan coffee fincas.
>Incorporating the way in which a kind of "primitive accumulation" (defined
>as absorbing new value into the system at below reproduction costs) operates
>to sustain they global economy seems particularly important.  In doing so,
>though, one would then have to discuss what impact that has on the sysiphean
>struggle of trade unionism.  The failure to take these two steps is I think
>a flaw in Moody's thinking that makes its way into the Post review of Negri
>and Hardt's Empire.

What happened to the Rwandan coffee growers sucks. But it hardly 
demonstrates that the center of global accumulation isn't in the 
First World, which is where most value production happens, it seems 
to me. Can you find some other examples  that prove the contrary?

Doug

RE: Re: RE: Brenner

Title: RE: [PEN-L:26902] Re: RE: Brenner

...

Justin had written: >>>You make too much of my neoSraffian remark, I just mean that like them, he  [Brenner] sticks to what Marx officially regards as surface phenomena,and does hnot try to explain these phemonena in value terms, but in terms of their interrelations.<<<

I answered:>>why "officially"? Marx didn't define what was "officially" Marxist. In fact, he rejected the idea of orthodoxy ("je ne suis pas une Marxiste").<<

> The "I am not a Marxist" line is mine.<

I didn't know that intellectual property rights applied to Marx's statements. 

>When I say Marx officially regards certan phenomena as surface, I means that when he talks value theory. he suggests that thesea re in need of value theoretical explanation. As Gil Skillman has (to my mind but not yours) shown, there is another strain in Marx that does not require invocation of value theory, what Gil calls historical materialist explanation. ... <

I still wonder about this word "official." If anyone is pushing the idea of "official" views, it's Gil, since he seems to want us to apply only the official methodology of the hegemonic school of economics, i.e., the methodological individualism of neoclassical economics (including game theory). (For something to be "official," there has to be an officialdom. The NC economics hierarchy is the most obvious officialdom among economists, rewarding those who toe the line (use the methodology, agree with the main propositions) with publication and tenure and punish those who disagree.) Gil, please correct me if I'm wrong in my impression of your methodological slant. 

When Marx says "that surface phenomena are in need of value-theoretic explanation" (which is, in my view, an accurate portrayal of his views), he's saying that we can't simply look at supply and demand and other microphenomena (prices, individual profits, etc.) We have to look at them in the context set by the capitalist mode of production. In modern lingo, he's saying we have to look at the macrofoundations of microeconomics. If you look at just the prices, individual profits, supply & demand, etc., as NC economists do, you end up suffering from commodity fetishism.

I wrote:>>Again, we don't know that Brenner eschews value theory.<<

>Ask him. I believe that he does. You don't know for sure that Sen does either, since he has never said anything about it one way or another, but it's a reasonable inference that he doesn't. I have heard Brenner dance away from questions involving value, or reformulate them into non-value forms, scores of times over 15 or so years.<

I'm pretty sure that Amartya Sen doesn't use Marx's law of value (since he's never pretended to be influenced by Marx), but I don't think it's worth my time to ask Bob (since I hardly ever see him). I would guess that he suffers from an historian's empiricist bias, which leans away from abstract theory of any sort, including Marx's law of value. (This bias can be a good thing, since it steered Brenner away from Roemer-type silliness.) 

Asking Brenner would distract us from a more important point: we have to acknowledge that academic research is not the individualistic process that it's often portrayed to be (for example, by individuals applying for tenure). There's a division of labor among academics, including amongst Marxist academics, so that each is dependent on the contributions of others. Modern Marxist academics -- including those who _explicitly_ eschew Marx's law of value (typically thinking of it as a theory of price determination and thus false) -- get a lot of their ideas (such as the Marxian theory of exploitation) from others, including from Marx himself, without actually having to do "value theory" (since Marx did it for them). Thus, the accurate parts of Roemer's theory, for example, come from Marx, even though he actively attacked Marx's method and many of Marx's conclusions. I doubt that he could have developed his theory without Marx's work (though if he had paid attention to the history of economic theory, he might have noticed that his theory is very similar to that of non-Marxists G.B. Shaw and Henry George). Indeed, his effort was a (failed) effort to translate Marx's theory into NC lingo. 

Similarly, Brenner's BOOM AND BUBBLE book (all this alliteration!) is informed by Marx's analysis even though he never explicitly admits it. But he, like the rest of us, sit on the shoulders of giants rather than developing our views from whole cloth (mixed metaphor!). Perhaps Brenner could have been better informed of and by Marx's analysis, but that's another issue. I can't discuss that because I haven't finished the book. So far, I'd say that his book doesn't contradict Marx's analysis. Rather, it's a concrete application of one tradition that stems from Marx.  

Brenner >>clearly agrees with the Marxian vision of history ("people make history, but not exactly as they please").<<

> So do I, and I think value

frappacinos and Brenner

2002-06-14 Thread Steve Diamond


It was not my intention to spark a renewed debate on Brenner, though it
would be interesting to have a good discussion on his new book.  Of course,
it would be wrong to ascribe to Solidarity, especially Labor Notes, all of
the views of Brenner - unfortunately.  In any case, I would ask that if
someone on the list - like Justin - says my views are mistaken that they
explain how - instead of just making what amounts to, well, a gratuitous
swipe!

He may have just been referring back to his earlier defense of Solidarity/LN
where he said that they do indeed care about places like Rwanda.  Of course,
any one with a soul "cares" about Rwanda, the point is to understand its
relationship to global capitalism.  That is the virtue and significance of
David Smith's argument which I think shifts the paradigm, so to speak, out
of the focus on the core industrialized countries so crucial to LN and
Brenner but without doing so with typical third worldist, unequal exchange
type thinking.

I think it is clear that a lean production theory sustains the "militant
trade union" core of LN/Solidarity politics and so it is hardly gratuitous
to discuss the link between the two.  Why?  Because it ignores how the law
of value operates at a global level - even in (perhaps particularly harshly
in) remote regions like the hard scrabble Rwandan coffee fincas.
Incorporating the way in which a kind of "primitive accumulation" (defined
as absorbing new value into the system at below reproduction costs) operates
to sustain they global economy seems particularly important.  In doing so,
though, one would then have to discuss what impact that has on the sysiphean
struggle of trade unionism.  The failure to take these two steps is I think
a flaw in Moody's thinking that makes its way into the Post review of Negri
and Hardt's Empire.

As for Bob, I believe that Loren Goldner made some telling comments on the
problems in his earlier NLR essay that I am told have been modified in the
new ms. but I have not seen it yet (except in an early stage draft that I
have not had a chance to look at).  In any case, there was little discussion
in the early ms., if I recall, of the role of the dollar much less
mechanisms like the clash of coffee buyers and producers in central africa
leading to the mass murder of hundreds of thousands.  If the left cannot
develop a critique of political economy that explains such a development in
a coherent way then we have no chance of developing a perspective inside the
labor movement of the industrialized countries that can respond to the
problem and we risk seeing the catastrophic success of new authoritarian
movements in the developing countries.


Stephen F. Diamond
School of Law
Santa Clara University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: RE: Brenner

>
>Justin writes:>I'm not accusing Bob of being a neoSraffian, although 
>(having
>discussed economics with him extensively over the years), I'll say that if
>he uses value theory, it's never something he's uttered in print or speech
>that I've read or heard.<
>
>No, you were praising him for being a neoSraffian (though I for one aren't
>sure what's meant by the "neo" here).

I think I'm the authority on what I was doing. To make it absolutely crystal 
clear, I disclaim the proposition that Brenner is a neoSraffian. Brenner is 
not a neoSraffian. If I ever said anything that may have mislead some people 
into thinking otherwise, I hereby disavow that construction and apologize 
for the misconception. OK? Got that out of the way?

Now, what I meant to say is that, although he is not and never has been a 
neoSraffian, Brenner does something that is analogous to what the N-Ss do, 
which is to work with the relations among prices, profits. technical 
prodiction processes, etc., and not try to explain these in value terms. Am 
I being clear enough yet?

You were saying that Brenner was
>applying neoSraffian analysis,

No,a sexplained above.

showing that Marx's law of value need not
>play a role.

Yes, Brenner does that, but not by using N-S theory.
>
> >You make too much of my neoSraffian remark, I just mean that like them, 
>he
>sticks to what Marx officially regards as surface phenomena,and does hnot
>try to explain these phemonena in value terms, but in terms of
>their interrelations.<
>
>why "officially"? Marx didn't define what was "officially" Marxist. In 
>fact,
>he rejected the idea of orthodoxy ("je ne suis pas une Marxiste").

The "I am not a Marxist" line is mine. When I say Marx officially regards 
certan phenomena as surface, I means that when he talks value theory. he 
suggests that thesea re in need of value theoretical explanation. As Gil 
Skillman has (to my mind but not yours) shown, there is another strain in 
Marx that does not require invocation of value theory, what Gil calls 
historical materialist explanation. Neither Gil nor Marx are N-S either . .. 
. .

>Again, we don't know that Brenner eschews value theory.

Ask him. I believe that he does. You don't know for sure that Sen does 
either, since he has never said anything about it one way or another, but 
it's a reasonable inference that he doesn't. I have heard Brennerdance away 
from questions involving value, or reformulate them into non-value forms, 
scores of times over 15 or so years.

He clearly agrees
>with the Marxian vision of history ("people make history, but not exactly 
>as
>they please").

So do I, and I think value theory is empty and intellectually harmful.

Marx's value theory is simply an application of that theory:
>in Marx, it's people that make commodities as part of the historical 
>process
>in the political economy, constrained and shaped by the social relations of
>production, so they don't do it as they please, but in an alienated way.

Oh, if that's all there is too it ;> But it isn't, is it?

I'm
>sure that Brenner would agree that "surface phenomena" such as profits are
>not the result of natural scarcity, individual tastes, and the like, but 
>are
>instead a product of human labor under the thumb of the capitalist mode of
>production. His discussion of serfdom vs. capitalism in the so-called
>"Brenner debate" suggests as much.

Sure, I agree with him, and so far as you describe it, I am a value theorist 
too. Unfortunately I don't think "a and "embodied labor" are very useful 
ways of talking abour exploitation, alienation, and the tyranny of markets. 
In particular, they do it explain thesephenomena. On your vbersion as stated 
here, value talk mereexpresses these phenomena in more opaque language.

jks

>JD
>

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Kerala, Kashmir & India's PE


There is a great piece on 'privatization' and primitive accumulation too:

http://www.flonnet.com/

Re: Re: Re: Costly privatizing of firefighting

2002-06-14 Thread Bill Burgess


Among others, I think the folks at the Canadian Centre for Policy 
Alternatives have been producing stuff on this,  but I didn't find a 
specific title in my quick search at 
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/bc/index.html. The BC government has set 
up an agency to promote public-private partnerships in health delivery, 
e.g. they plan to open a new PPP hospital in Abbotsford, even though the 
accounting study commissioned projects "savings" of  less than 3% (and this 
does not include lots of costs, e.g., for government planning).

Bill


At 07:44 PM 13/06/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>According to this guy privatisation increases efficiency in Swedish health
>care. I have been looking for a critique of  these reforms but can't find
>any. Does anyone have URLs pointing to such a critique? I do know that the
>re-introduction of copays has increased usage of the system byt he better
>off compared to the less well off. Before copays there was little difference
> It is interesting that at least some unions support the changes. Also,
>the principle of universal coverage is not being challenged. What is
>happening is that more and more the system is opening up as an outlet for
>private capital and for profit health care and justified in terms of choice
>and efficiency. The state is able to serve private capital without
>challenging the principle of universal coverage.
>
>
>
>Cheers, Ken Hanly
>
>SWEDISH HEALTH-CARE REFORM:
>FROM PUBLIC MONOPOLIES TO MARKET SERVICES
>by Johan Hjertqvist*
>
>For 500 years Sweden has been a uniform and centralized country. Today it is
>on the road to pluralism and stronger regional governments. Often the leader
>of new trends in Europe, Swedes are making it clear to their politicians
>that they want public policies which cater better to individual needs and
>preferences.
>You can notice this change in the labour markets. Collective bargaining is
>in retreat, and Manpower, a temporary-help agency, is now the second-largest
>employer in Stockholm. In the education industry, privately operated schools
>are doubling their market share every year (though from a low base), and
>competitors who offer e-learning solutions for workplace education are
>booming. Signs of change are also apparent in the health-care industry:
>privatized hospitals, clinics and medical practices of all kinds; increasing
>numbers of private insurance companies; Internet-based patient information
>and a profusion of well documented opinions in favour of free choice,
>competition and diversity.
>
>Underlying this change of opinion is the success of public policy
>experiments that have embraced the principles of competition and choice. In
>1992-94, the Greater Council of Stockholm launched a number of competitive
>initiatives whose success is now apparent. Competition in public
>transportation in the metropolitan area has reduced taxpayer costs by 600
>million SEK, or roughly 25 percent. In one blow, with competitive
>contracting, the Greater Council reduced the yearly cost of ambulance
>service in the Stockholm region by 15 percent. In all areas service quality
>has increased noticeably.
>
>The results in health care have been just as startling. For example,
>privatized nursing homes have reduced costs by 20-30 percent. Or again, a
>recent evaluation has shown that private medical specialists are more
>efficient than their colleagues in public service. They focus on
>"with-patient time", which results in more patient value. Publicly employed
>doctors, in contrast, have more staff, spend more of their time on paperwork
>and ask for 10-15 percent higher budgets to provide the same treatment
>levels.
>
>By 1994, when the centre-right regional coalition lost the election, 100
>small and medium-size health-care contractors had been established, all of
>which had previously worked within the public system. All except one remain
>active. The change in government slowed, but did not stop, the process. In
>1998, the centre-right grouping returned to power, and they picked up new
>steam. They have wide public support in the urban areas, including that of
>the largest health-care unions, and plan to turn most of primary care into
>contracted services, an irreversible major step.
>
>Right now, about another 100 health-care units are in the process of leaving
>public ownership to become private companies. The Greater Council lends
>significant support in the form of free training and start-up consultants.
>In general, the new contractors run local health-care stations, GP group
>practices, treatment centers for mothers and infants, laboratories and
>psychiatric out-of-hospital clinics. When (and if) the Council completes
>this transformation, private GPs and other contractors will deliver around
>40 percent of all health-care services, and about 80 percent of all primary
>health-care in the metropolitan area.
>
>In 1999, a private company, Capio Ltd., bought one of Stockholm's largest
>hospitals, the St. George, from the Greate

dan scanlon


sorry to take up bandwidth here, but my messages to you are bouncing.
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

coffee cartel again


Rakesh passed on his thoughts about the cartel:

Plunging coffee prices probably wouldn't have had such catastrophic
effects if the short run price elasticity was not so low.  As Singer
and Raffer argue (Economics of North South Divide, p. 132), prolonged
troughs of coffee prices do not increase final demand strongly,
because producer country shares, and thus their effects on consumer
markets are small. Price reduction are usually not passed on
immediately, as this would mean seeling stocks below the price at
which they were bought. Intermediaries holding stocks have an
interest in selling these before lowering their pirces. Income terms
of trade must be expected to decline like prices in the short run. A
long and pronounced price decline, though, is likely to increase
demand, not least from poorer countries. Reactions by companies
holding stocks will thus be asymmetric. While increasing prices
quickly after commodity price increases means hefty additional
profits from more cheaply bought stocks, "windfall losses" due to a
price decline are usually avoided.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

RE: Brenner

Title: RE: [PEN-L:26896] Brenner

Justin writes:>I'm not accusing Bob of being a neoSraffian, although (having discussed economics with him extensively over the years), I'll say that if he uses value theory, it's never something he's uttered in print or speech that I've read or heard.<

No, you were praising him for being a neoSraffian (though I for one aren't sure what's meant by the "neo" here). You were saying that Brenner was applying neoSraffian analysis, showing that Marx's law of value need not play a role.

>You make too much of my neoSraffian remark, I just mean that like them, he sticks to what Marx officially regards as surface phenomena,and does hnot try to explain these phemonena in value terms, but in terms of

their interrelations.<

why "officially"? Marx didn't define what was "officially" Marxist. In fact, he rejected the idea of orthodoxy ("je ne suis pas une Marxiste"). He had a theory which differentiated between the abstract analysis of "capital in general" (volume I of CAPITAL) and more concrete analysis of phenomena closer to the surface of society (volume III), saying that both were needed to attain a complete analysis of capitalism. There's nothing "official" about this, since there's no party central committee declaring it to be the party line or part of the correct program.

Though some Marxists accuse neoSraffians of sticking to "surface phenomena" (since they basically take production for granted, as somehow being represented by fixed input-output coefficients and deal only with exchange relations), that isn't strictly speaking true. They deal with an abstract -- indeed, impossible -- model of surface phenomena rather than with those phenomena themselves.

Again, we don't know that Brenner eschews value theory. He clearly agrees with the Marxian vision of history ("people make history, but not exactly as they please"). Marx's value theory is simply an application of that theory: in Marx, it's people that make commodities as part of the historical process in the political economy, constrained and shaped by the social relations of production, so they don't do it as they please, but in an alienated way. I'm sure that Brenner would agree that "surface phenomena" such as profits are not the result of natural scarcity, individual tastes, and the like, but are instead a product of human labor under the thumb of the capitalist mode of production. His discussion of serfdom vs. capitalism in the so-called "Brenner debate" suggests as much.

Brenner


I'm not accusing Bob of being a neoSraffian, although (having discussed 
economics with him extensively over the years), I'll say that if he uses 
value theory, it's never something he's uttered in print or speech that I've 
read or heard. You make too much of my neoSraffian remark, I just mean that 
like them, he sticks to what Marx officially regards as surface phenomena,a 
nd does hnot try to explain these phemonena in value terms, but in terms of 
their interrelations. jks

>Justin writes:>Robert Brenner, for one, shows how to do it with reference 
>to
>value. His analysis the dynamics of global turbulance, though not cast in
>neo-Sraffian terms explicitly, uses only phenomena like prices, profits,
>rates of automation, sunk investment and the like. Incidentally, as one
>might expect of a quasi-neo-Sraffan analysis, his account parallels one of
>Marx's fragmetary stories about the crisis of overproduction, but with
>reference to value. <
>
>without asking Bob, I think it's wrong to presume that he doesn't use 
>Marx's
>law of value heuristic -- or that he uses it. It's quite possible that he
>uses the law of value at an abstract level -- as Marx did in volume I of
>CAPITAL -- and then publishes only application of value-theoretical ideas
>about issues on a much more concrete level (e.g., his BOOM AND BUBBLE).
>Remember that Marx himself didn't reject his law of value when he wrote the
>"18th Brumaire," even though that work -- and many other of his works --
>didn't refer to it at all.
>
>Two things are clear though. First, Brenner doesn't use the crude
>(non-Marxian) version of the "labor theory of value" in which individual
>prices are assumed to move with values all the time. (He also doesn't use
>the kind of "labor theory of value" that the Sraffians attack.)
>
>Second, he does _not_ apply Sraffian or neo-Sraffian analysis in THE BOOM
>AND THE BUBBLE. Sraffian analysis is a very abstract equilibrium system,
>without really involving fixed capital (sunk costs, etc.) except in a
>somewhat bizarre way. Fixed capital keeps profit rates from equalizing
>between sectors in the short run, so that the Sraffian model doesn't apply.
>(One reason why Joan Robinson trashed Sraffian analysis was because it
>couldn't deal with disequilibrium dynamics at all. She saw it as useful 
>only
>as a critique of neoclassical stupidities and what she saw as Marx's labor
>theory of value.) Brenner's analysis also lacks such things as input-output
>feedback effects (capital reversal, reswitching) that is so characteristic
>of Sraffian economics. Also, as I'm sure he's willing to admit, he's no
>mathematician, so he wouldn't use the highly formal framework that 
>Sraffians
>use. (Sraffians, like orthodox economists, fetishize math.)
>
>In that book, Brenner does use "only phenomena like prices, profits, rates
>of automation," etc. But that's simply saying that he's dealing with a low
>level of abstraction, dealing with what Marx called "surface appearances."
>As I said, that's no indication that he doesn't have a higher-level 
>analysis
>in the background. But, as I said above, it's pretty clear that that his
>higher-level analyis isn't the formal equilibrium utopia that Sraffians
>love.
>
>Jim Devine


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Marx on Tax

2002-06-14 Thread miychi


Marx wrote in Communist manifesto
3. ABOLITION OF ALL RIGHTS OF INHERITANCE  ( emphasis added -CB)
 And later
Annulment of all the contracts that have alienated public property (banks,
railways, mines, etc.), and the exploitation of all state-owned workshops to
be entrusted to the workers who work there;
12. (The Programme of the Parti Ouvrier 1880)
According to Marx, he deny any form private succession. Because of abolition
of civil right IT is clear

RE: Re: Re: Frappacinos and the law of value

Title: RE: [PEN-L:26892] Re: Re: Frappacinos and the law of value

>>And if the law of value is a superfluous concept in marxism, what
concept should underly a holistic approach to the present system of
global capitalism?<<

Justin writes:>Robert Brenner, for one, shows how to do it with reference to value. His analysis the dynamics of global turbulance, though not cast in neo-Sraffian terms explicitly, uses only phenomena like prices, profits, rates of automation, sunk investment and the like. Incidentally, as one might expect of a quasi-neo-Sraffan analysis, his account parallels one of Marx's fragmetary stories about the crisis of overproduction, but with reference to value. <

without asking Bob, I think it's wrong to presume that he doesn't use Marx's law of value heuristic -- or that he uses it. It's quite possible that he uses the law of value at an abstract level -- as Marx did in volume I of CAPITAL -- and then publishes only application of value-theoretical ideas about issues on a much more concrete level (e.g., his BOOM AND BUBBLE). Remember that Marx himself didn't reject his law of value when he wrote the "18th Brumaire," even though that work -- and many other of his works -- didn't refer to it at all.

Two things are clear though. First, Brenner doesn't use the crude (non-Marxian) version of the "labor theory of value" in which individual prices are assumed to move with values all the time. (He also doesn't use the kind of "labor theory of value" that the Sraffians attack.)

Second, he does _not_ apply Sraffian or neo-Sraffian analysis in THE BOOM AND THE BUBBLE. Sraffian analysis is a very abstract equilibrium system, without really involving fixed capital (sunk costs, etc.) except in a somewhat bizarre way. Fixed capital keeps profit rates from equalizing between sectors in the short run, so that the Sraffian model doesn't apply. (One reason why Joan Robinson trashed Sraffian analysis was because it couldn't deal with disequilibrium dynamics at all. She saw it as useful only as a critique of neoclassical stupidities and what she saw as Marx's labor theory of value.) Brenner's analysis also lacks such things as input-output feedback effects (capital reversal, reswitching) that is so characteristic of Sraffian economics. Also, as I'm sure he's willing to admit, he's no mathematician, so he wouldn't use the highly formal framework that Sraffians use. (Sraffians, like orthodox economists, fetishize math.)

In that book, Brenner does use "only phenomena like prices, profits, rates of automation," etc. But that's simply saying that he's dealing with a low level of abstraction, dealing with what Marx called "surface appearances." As I said, that's no indication that he doesn't have a higher-level analysis in the background. But, as I said above, it's pretty clear that that his higher-level analyis isn't the formal equilibrium utopia that Sraffians love.

Jim Devine

Re: RE: tompaine.com

2002-06-14 Thread ravi

Sabri Oncu wrote:
> 
> He simply cries very loudly whenever he needs attention. As a
> Turkish saying goes, "The baby who doesn't cry, doesn't get the
> milk."
> 

i am perfectly happy with summarizing sokal's behaviour as above.

> I love my son more for that ability of his.

unfortunately i nurse no paternal pride towards sokal! ;-)

--ravi

Re: Re: Frappacinos and the law of value