biotech trade talks
[NYTimes] June 20, 2003 Talks Collapse on U.S. Efforts to Open Europe to Biotech Food By DAVID LEONHARDT WASHINGTON, June 19 - Talks between the United States and the European Union over opening up Europe to genetically modified foods broke down in Geneva today, the Bush administration announced, heightening trans-Atlantic tensions. American officials said they would soon request that the World Trade Organization convene a panel to hear their case, in an effort to end a ban that farm groups say is depriving agricultural businesses of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The Bush administration called Europe's policy illegal, saying that scientific research had shown genetically altered crops to be safe. The European Union "denies choices to European consumers," Richard Mills, a spokesman for the United States trade representative, Robert Zoellick, said in a statement today. European officials said the long-term effects of altered food remained uncertain. They said they were disappointed by the administration's publicizing of the dispute. The food dispute is one of a handful of trade fights between the United States and Europe and comes as tensions linger over the war in Iraq, which many European countries opposed. Trade officials also continue to haggle over steel tariffs imposed by the Bush administration last year, farm subsidies on both sides of the Atlantic, and an American law that reduces taxes for companies with overseas operations, among other issues. "There have never been more of these litigations than there are right now," Robert E. Lighthizer, a trade lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Washington, said of the disputes. He said the relationship was "extremely contentious." American and European officials met in Geneva today for a round of negotiations, known as a consultation, after the United States filed suit at the W.T.O. over the issue last month. Today's announcement means that the trade organization will soon begin selecting a panel of judges to hear the case, although a decision is likely to take months. Genetically modified food - which can grow more quickly than traditional crops and can be resistant to insects - has caused scant controversy in the United States, where people eat it every day. Almost 40 percent of all corn planted in this country in genetically modified. In Europe, however, the environmental movement is more powerful, and a series of food problems, including mad cow disease, have made people far more skeptical of assurances of safety from governments and businesses. Some food packages there bear the label "GM free," and the initials are well enough known to be used regularly in headlines in British newspapers. The European Commission has permitted the use of some genetically modified foods, like soybeans, in the last decade, but has effectively placed a moratorium on most new products. The Bush administration and agricultural businesses view the policy as simple protectionism because American companies, which dominate the biotechnology industry,would benefit most from lifting the ban. Without it, American companies would export about $300 billion more in corn each year than they do now, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Scientific research has generally shown that genetically modified foods do not cause health problems. "Countries shouldn't be able to erect barriers for nonscientific reasons," Don Lipton, a spokesman for the farm federation, said. "That's a very important principle in international trade." In a speech last month, President Bush escalated the dispute by saying that Europe's policy was undermining efforts to fight hunger in Africa. African nations, fearing their products would be shunned by Europe, are avoiding developing genetically modified food that might help feed the continent, he said. "European governments should join, not hinder, the great cause of ending hunger in Africa," he said in the speech. European diplomats reacted angrily to Mr. Bush's comments, saying that their health concerns were serious and noting that European nations spend a greater part of their budget on foreign aid than the United States. European officials have also said that they are surprised that the United States has highlighted the dispute recently. This summer, the European Parliament is scheduled to consider a measure that would establish strict labeling rules for genetically modified products, which could allow more of them to be sold. Europe's resistance to modified crops received a political lift last week when a global treaty restricting them was approved. Although it is not clear what effect the treaty, known as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, will have on the trade dispute, it is likely to make it easier for countries to restrict importing the crops, trade experts say. The United States, worried about the treaty's impact on American exporters, agreed only reluctantly to support it when it was negotiated in
Re: Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, Hatch says
Wired News reports that Hatch's own web site has code that is unlicensed. I don't think that he would like you do destroy his server, but you never know. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fictitious Capital website
Hardly a master at all. Yes, the term was used, but does not seem to be that common. I located several sources, but it was not common. It mostly had to do with financial manipulation. Marx seemed to be trying to integrate the concept into value theory, but he never finished the task. I have not followed Loren's political vision, but I do agree with him in trying to work on completing Marx's task. On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 04:35:30PM -0400, Barkley Rosser wrote: > Well, I am way too busy to check out this new site, > indeed will probably be getting off this one tomorrow > (was up to 6 AM this morning working). But the term > "fictitious capital" way predates Marx. Adam Smith > used it and I think it probably originated with Richard > Cantillon, who was a successful speculator in both > the Mississippi Bubble in France of 1719 and the > related South Sea Bubble in England of 1719-20. > Marx adds some spice to these earlier discussions, > but not anything really profoundly new. > I would note that the master of this list wrote a > quite good book on this subject, which may be why > he was approached about this new list. Any comments > on this matter, Michael? > Barkley Rosser > - Original Message - > From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 10:48 AM > Subject: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website > > > I want to urge Marxmail and PEN-L subscribers to take a look at the > Fictitious Capital website (www.munism.com) that was announced recently > and specifically at the Introduction. It has all the strengths and > weaknesses of the sort of left-communism that the webmaster Loren > Goldner is associated with. Whatever theoretical disagreements I have > with Goldner, he is certainly a provocative thinker whose collected > articles appear on the "Break their Haughty Power" website at: > http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/. > > Goldner shares many of the anti-Bolshevik prejudices of the autonomist > and anarchist currents, but like other left-communists such as Paul > Mattick this does not prevent him from developing some thought-provoking > analyses of the capitalist economy. > > While I am in no position to answer his claim that the Marxist left has > failed to understand the importance of fictitious capital (an > understanding that can only be advanced by a thorough grounding in v.2 & > 3 of Capital, a task remains in my 'to-do' bin), I do have some > queasiness about whether this "is at the heart of todays situation." My > guess is that imperialist war and semi-colonial resistance has much more > weight. I also wonder if Goldner is elevating one aspect of the Marxist > analysis to a place all out of proportion to its original weight, in a > manner somewhat similar to John Holloway's fetishization of the term > fetishization. At any rate, Goldner at least writes in clear, direct > language unlike the fogbound Holloway. > > My comments will be limited to areas that I have a glancing familiarity > with, the first of which deals with the business of a "socialist > program". Goldner writes: > > "Socialist program, in short, has to insist on how little a mature > transition out of capitalism would look like the contemporary world. The > capitalists have a full program for society that reaches far beyond the > point of production, but the left offers nothing of the kind. Above and > beyond this type of analysis, the purpose of this website is to make > that kind of program palpable. This programmatic vacuum of the left is > at least partly responsible for the ebb of struggle that has taken over > the United States and much of Europe in the past three decades." > > Might I suggest that this is entirely the wrong approach? It will lead > inexorably in the direction of a kind of utopian socialism that > characterizes much of the left today, from Albert-Hahnel's Parecon to > the various schemas of the market socialists ranging from Mondragon writ > large to John Roemer's Basic Vouchers (BV's). > > I hold out the possibility that Goldner will not come up with blueprints > for a future socialist society and will limit himself to "minimum > transitional demands" such as "Dismantling of the dollar-based global > financial system and of fictitious capital in all its forms". I must > say, however, that this strikes me as neither minimum in the Social > Democratic sense nor transitional in the Leon Trotsky sense. All in all, > the call for dismantling of the dollar-based global financial system, > etc." has a certain maximal quality, if you gather my drift. > > I also obviously have criticisms of his failure to draw a clear class > distinction between capitalist society and societies in transition > between capitalism and socialism. Goldner writes: > > >>Out of this pre-1914 reality, and the defeats of the revolutions of > 1917-21, came the planning states of the 1930sStalinist, fascist, > corporatist, Social Democratic, Keynesian, Third Wor
Re: Fictitious Capital website
Actually, it was sort of like a Mussolini vision of fascism. Rathenau organized the industrialists. The state was relatively ineffectual and was relatively discredited. Just reading that today in Tooze, J. Adam. 2001. Statistics and the German State, 1900-1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 04:45:41PM -0400, Barkley Rosser wrote: > Supposedly the model for Lenin of state planning > of the economy was the wartime planning by the > Imperial German government during WW I, not > quite full blown fascism, but sure as hell not socialism > either. > Barkley Rosser > - Original Message - > From: "Max B. Sawicky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 11:39 AM > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website > > > > I don't think it's an either (wholesale destruction . . . etc.) > > or (planning). > > > > I would say planning is part of fascism. It entails plans > > by select interests to crush or swallow up competing ones, > > as well as to milk the working class. > > > > I see a fair amount of such planning right here. The Dept > > of Defense is one big planned economy. Favored albeit un- > > profitable firms are kept on life support. Contracts are > > awarded without regard to competition. Homeland Security is > > evolving in the same direction. > > > > Agri subsidies are a type of planning too. > > > > I agree that the wholesale destruction etc. distinguishes fascism > > more from non-fascism than does planning in the abstract. But > > absent personal study of the matter, I hazard the guess that fascist > > planning is qualitatively different from non-fascist dirigisme of > > the present US regime, the center, or the social democracy. > > > > mbs > > > > > > > > > > To put it as succinctly as possible, this has more in common with > > anarchism than it does with Marxism. Fascism is not about "planning". It > > is about the wholesale destruction of trade unions and socialist parties > > in order to maximize the power of corporations and pave the way for wars > > of conquest. If one cannot tell the difference between Nazi Germany on > > one hand, and social democratic Sweden or revolutionary Cuba on the > > other, then one needs to revisit v. 1 of Capital, which might be > > inadequate in terms of an understanding of fictitious capital but quite > > good on the question of commodity production. > > > > -- > > > > The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org > > -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Complexity
Barkley's comments on chaos/catastrophe/power law theories are first rate. By the way, Sam Bowles runs the econ. program at the Santa Fe Institute. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Complexity
Jim: > it's interesting (and perhaps sad from Sabri's perspective) > that the whole idea of "scientific revolutions" was pushed > by many people on the left (embracing Kuhn). I may be a leftist but whatever I say about science is based on my personal experiences in the wonderland as one of the troops. Not only has this been the most humbling experience I had (boy, this mathematics is very difficult) but also has been a laboratory to experiment with dialectics. I guess my objection mainly derives from what Ian said: > But revolution sells; normal is boring in the land of > Hype and Lies. The same goes for "financial markets" too. When people learn that I was a "market person", most of them say, "It must have been very exciting". "What excitement are you talking about?" I always say. It was the most boring experience I had. Just dp/p, that is all! How exciting can that be? Sabri
Re: against Chandler's Visible Hand
- Original Message - From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Bryce, Robert. 2002. Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, Jealousy and the Death of > Enron with What Went Wrong at Enron Today (PublicAffairs). > 222: "Skilling was able to convince a nearly constant parade of reporters > that Enron's trading business was invincible. Other companies were going > to explode as Enron figured out how to buy and sell every part of an > individual company's traditional business. Enron was going to > intermediate everything, commoditize everything. Just as Ford Motor > Company didn't have to own the steel mill to build cars, Enron was going > to speed the breakup of business in the world into its individual parts. > "We believe that markets are the best way to order or organize an > industrial enterprise, " Skilling told the Financial Times in June 2000. > "You are going to see the deintegration (sic) of the business systems we > have all grown up with." Durgin and Skinner, "Inside Track: The Guru of > Decentralisation." Which is why Harvard Business School is a greater threat to capitalism, on its own terms, than any English Dept. ever could be. Ian
Jurriaan Bendien on fictitious capital
1. Traditional A good brief discussion of the concept in the Marxian tradition is in Tom Bottomore(ed), A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. I think maybe Laurence Harris wrote it. I think by fictitious capital Marx himself means all financial claims to part of the surplus product (surplus value) which take the form of financial assets unrelated to investment in real production, and which therefore do not reflect real value relations. So therefore whenever "something out of nothing" is produced, through trading in some exchange-values, we are dealing with fictitious capital. This capital is fictitious because it is produced outside the capital-relation, it has no immediate connection or origin in the exploitation of labour-power, it is generated in exchange processes, in circulation. Marx's analysis had a corollary, because his value theory says that, at some point, fictitious capital "collapses" and the real value relations assert themselves again. In other words, fictitious capital distorts the real economic relations and at some point it is not sustainable, investor confidence suddenly falls and financial markets cave in, it was a castle built on sand, a house of cards. For example, the USA has the largest foreign debt in the world, and ultimately what sustains that, is confidence in the American army, but, around that confidence, a lot of fictitious capital develops. If it turns out, that the American army cannot sustain social stability and a stable investment climate, as will happen, then a lot of capital staked on this confidence alone will disappear. 2. Forms One of the first forms of fictitious capital would be types of bank credit, where a bank creates additional purchasing power which comes out of nowhere, and is not normally associated with any increase in circulated money tokens or production of goods and services. The next may be putting a private property fence around unimproved land. The next may be stocks, shares and bonds which are overvalued, and no longer bear any realistic relationship to the value of any assets to which they refer. Then you have various kinds of currency speculation and futures markets. Another example might be seigniorage. And so on.v I read somewhere a while ago that once again the value of world trade, and the value of international capital flows, exceeds the value of real production by many, many times, giving rise to the expression casino capitalism. The idea here is, that a lot of gambling goes on, which is purely based on PERCEPTIONS of anticipated profits. It is not that the law of value is cancelled out, it is just that there is a whole circuit of capital which as it were sits on top of that. In the language of finance, they refer in this sense for example to "financial derivatives". To generate a financial claim, there must first of all be some production generating new income. But the next thing is that once the financial claim exists, you can trade in the financial claim itself, and so on. 3. Culture of use-values However there is another level to the analysis, namely, at a point where the speculative game intensifies, then the game becomes so highly abstract, that it is no longer clear what the dealer/trader/investor really knows, and what his real capacity is, and what he is really worth. There is a sense in which the dealer can trade purely on the confidence that people have in him as a successful risk-taker. This is to say, the perceptions of the personal value of a person may themselves go up and down like a yo-yo, as if the person HIMSELF was but a share or obligation in the stock market. What we are gambling on now, is not the anticipated profits of owning a financial asset, but we are gambling about the potential earning power of real people. The next stage is, that we try to manipulate the lives of real people, so that they make the maximum profits in a secure way and realise their potential, and this in turn relates to a sexual culture, where forinstance beautiful women trade for big money. It provides a climate conducive to confidence tricks and frauds, because everything hinges on how you are perceived, your observable behaviour, and simply by acting in a certain way, you may be able to swindle a lot of funds. But of course most people neither have the financial knowledge nor the capital to participate in casino capitalism. All they can do is imitate the "risk culture" through some kind of mimicking act, without having the big money. So for example you have the yuppie phenomenon, the yuppie does not have much cash, but he uses his personal and sexual skills to make social contacts, win confidence, and gradually ingratiate himself with sufficient people, so that at a certain point, when an opportunity knocks, he can seize on it and make a mint. In sexual culture, the emphasis then shifts to your ability to hustle, "turn tricks" or alternatively, your ability to get sexual attention when and where you need it, your ability to be sexually popular.
complexity
With regard to this question of "revolutions," I think that the one where there may be a political element is the continuing undervaluation of catastrophe theory. Chaos theory and complexity theory are much more easily house-broken ideologically, so to speak. After all, there is a right-wing, Austrian-derived, complexity theory, how free markets are self-organizing and all that, which actually dates back to Hayek himself. A curious aspect of how the hyping and dehyping can distort analysis shows up in the analysis of the 1987 stock market crash. This occurred near the peak of the chaos theory intellectual bubble, but well after the crash (and overshoot in my view) of the catastrophe theory bubble. Everything was to explained by chaos theory, nothing by catastrophe theory. So, you had all kinds of chickens running around with their head cut off clucking about how the stock market crash proved the existence of the "butterfly effect" (or sensitive dependence on initial conditions) of chaos theory, when it did no such thing. In fact, although nobody of any prominence mentioned it at the time, the 1974 paper in the Journal of Mathematical Economics by E.Christopher Zeeman, vol. 1, pp. 39-44, "On the Unstable Behavior of the Stock Exchanges," had much more to say about what happened in 1987 than did any chaos theory model. It was the first paper on cat theory in econ and was one that had been subjected to truly idiotic critiques in the late 1970s. Today its value is well understood and it is frequently cited in the current complexity, heterogeneous agents, econophysics kinds of stuff that is now becoming almost standard to explain what the hell is going on in stock markets. But, I think the "more revolutionary" tailings coming out of catastrophe theory are one not so obvious reason why it remains out of bounds to most economists. Barkley Rosser
Re: Complexity
Title: RE: [PEN-L] Complexity it's interesting (and perhaps sad from Sabri's perspective) that the whole idea of "scientific revolutions" was pushed by many people on the left (embracing Kuhn). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > -Original Message- > From: Sabri Oncu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 2:55 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Complexity > > > Barkley: > > > Today, chaos theory is just normal science. > > Exactly! And a good one I would say. > > This has been my point all along. > > I am sick and tired of hearing about the soliton revolution, > chaos revolution, complexity revolution and the like. > > These are not revolutions. These are "natural/normal" qualitative > turns in the progress of science, which is hardly linear. > > Best, > > Sabri >
Re: Complexity
- Original Message - From: "Sabri Oncu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Barkley: > > > Today, chaos theory is just normal science. > > Exactly! And a good one I would say. > > This has been my point all along. > > I am sick and tired of hearing about the soliton revolution, > chaos revolution, complexity revolution and the like. > > These are not revolutions. These are "natural/normal" qualitative > turns in the progress of science, which is hardly linear. > > Best, > > Sabri But revolution sells; normal is boring in the land of Hype and Lies. Ian
Re: Complexity
Barkley: > Today, chaos theory is just normal science. Exactly! And a good one I would say. This has been my point all along. I am sick and tired of hearing about the soliton revolution, chaos revolution, complexity revolution and the like. These are not revolutions. These are "natural/normal" qualitative turns in the progress of science, which is hardly linear. Best, Sabri
Enron and Conflict of Interest
The Spring Issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives contains three articles under the above heading that you may find interesting. The Healy and Palepu article on "The Fall of Enron" is an excellent summary of what happened at Enron and may be quite useful for those who are interested in the subject. Best, Sabri
Re: Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
heck, didn't the US leave a bunch of radioactive materials unprotected in Iraq? that didn't have negative effects, did it? (Maybe this proves the laissez-faire theory of nuclear regulation?) It's notable that he didn't object to someone writing to _him_. Instead, he sought out the offensive material. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message-From: andie nachgeborenen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 2:33 PMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Friendly advice from the government??? to the list Yeah, I'm worried -- what's he doing wasting his time surfing the net when he should be keeping track of all that plutonium? jksEugene Coyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Barkley, he's in charge of the nuclear program at DOE. Worried now?Barkley Rosser wrote: Michael, Not to worry..yet. This clown is from DOE, not DOD or DOJ or HOS. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "michael perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 11:00 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Friendly advice from the government??? to the list I got this note this morning. I get plenty of complaints about the archives, but this one is different. from: "Chilman, Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Chilman, Walter" wrote: Dear Michael... one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of those. http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the benefit of other people. Ivan Hild -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Do you Yahoo!?SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
Re: Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
Yeah, I'm worried -- what's he doing wasting his time surfing the net when he should be keeping track of all that plutonium? jksEugene Coyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Barkley, he's in charge of the nuclear program at DOE. Worried now?Barkley Rosser wrote: Michael, Not to worry..yet. This clown is from DOE, not DOD or DOJ or HOS. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "michael perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 11:00 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Friendly advice from the government??? to the list I got this note this morning. I get plenty of complaints about the archives, but this one is different. from: "Chilman, Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Chilman, Walter" wrote: Dear Michael... one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of those. http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the benefit of other people. Ivan Hild -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
Re: Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
Great, a racist nut case in charge of DOE nuke programs! Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: Eugene Coyle To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 5:06 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Friendly advice from the government??? to the list Barkley, he's in charge of the nuclear program at DOE. Worried now?Barkley Rosser wrote: Michael, Not to worry..yet. This clown is from DOE, not DOD or DOJ or HOS. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "michael perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 11:00 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Friendly advice from the government??? to the list I got this note this morning. I get plenty of complaints about the archives, but this one is different. from: "Chilman, Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Chilman, Walter" wrote: Dear Michael... one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of those. http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the benefit of other people. Ivan Hild -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Complexity
Les, Guess you had better send me your email address and we can deal with certain matters offlist. Sorry figures not available on the website version. They were supposed to be there. I got the chaotic hysteresis thing from his "cartoon" book with Shaw in 1987. The first economic application was by Tonu Puu of Sweden in a business cycle model in his 1989 _Nonlinear Economic Dynamics_ (1st edn), Springer-Verlag, but I only figured this out later. I also cooked up the term "chaotic bubble" (they are speculative bubbles that follow a chaotic dynamic, duh), although the first application predated the term, being in a very influential paper by my editorial predecessor, Richard H. Day and his student Weihong Huang, "Bulls, Bears, and Market Sheep," JEBO, 1990, vol. 14, pp. 299-329. Real world bubbles look more like this than the usual sort of smoothly moving babies one sees in most theoretical models. Yeah, the stuff with Marsden, etc. tends to be more soporific, definitely not acid-drenched. Regarding your specific points: 1) The "chaos control" literature is supposed to deal with this and is very active. The econ applications of this are way behind and often pretty stupid. In physics it is really getting somewhere, especially in the area of celestial mechanics (controlling spacecraft) and in signals management. 2) "Reduction of dimension"? All of complex dynamics? Certainly in the empirical chaos lit there has been a failure to find much in the way of low dimensional deterministic chaos. Is this what you are referring to? In other areas, e.g., catastrophe theory models of species collapse and extinction from overharvesting, there is certainly a low enough dimensionality in some models to be very useful. 3) Do you mean"fractal" or "fractional," although these are certainly related. This stuff is still be studied and used in time series analysis, especially for long memory stuff, which also appears to be there in a lot of financial time series. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Les Schaffer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:11 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Complexity > Barkley wrote: > > > I think Ralph Abraham is a genius. > > i liked his cartoon books on dynamics very much. it was his text w/ > Marsden and Ratiu that puts me to sleep. > > > He also discovered "chaotic hysteresis," although I am the one who > > coined that term. > > can you send me your paper on this offlist, it sounds interesting? the > one on your wesbite has no figures. > > other bubbles which have subsided some: > > 1.) chaos theory was going to point the way to a "solution" to > turbulence. hasn't happened yet. > > 2.) complex dynamics projected onto low dimensional subspaces: nice > idea, havent seen any actual implementation in a problem which begs > for reduction of dimension. > > 3.) fractional dimension fad: there was a time when everyone > published a fractional dimension for their time series. what was > that supposed to prove??? > > les schaffer >
Re: RES: [PEN-L] Complexity
Well, I just commented on Sornette, I guess. I have defended long waves on this list before, but I do not think Sornette's methods prove they exist. Yes, these kinds of predictions are the sort of stuff for hyping sales of the book. Again, indeed the power law stuff that is the main point of his book is for real. But he neither discovered nor is the main student of it, maybe just the guy getting to the bookshelves with the first really hypy book coming out of it. I know the very knowledgeable reviewer I have looking at it does not think all that much of it, although he is very respectful of the papers Sornette has published in the journal, Quantitative Finance. I would note that the power law stuff can also be used to study city size distributions (often under the name "Zipf's Law") and income and wealth distributions (the original Pareto distribution, which is more skewed than just your old garden variety lognormal). Duncan Foley has some of his students at the New School looking at this latter sort of stuff, which I have a good deal of respect for. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Renato Pompeu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 10:10 PM Subject: [PEN-L] RES: [PEN-L] Complexity > >What's your view on Didier Sornette and log-periodic > power laws? Another intellectual bubble developing? > I've got his "Why Stock Markets Crash" and there is > some good stuff there, but he appears to be trying to > extend his theory into a general principle of stock > market movements. HE's also predicted economic > collapse somewhere around 2050, which is usually the > economic iconoclast's equivalent of jumping the shark. > > dd > > Well, Kondratieff in the 1920s spoke about 50-70 years cycles. This would > give, for instance, 1929-1999-2049... > Renato Pompeu >
Re: Complexity
Sornette's book is clearly a wild overhype, although containing a lot of useful stuff. I am having it reviewed for the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. It is part of a broader current fad, which is a subset of complex dynamics, the so-called econophysics movement. Power laws are their big thing, which they like to derive from all sorts of physics laws, with no way to distinguish between which of these works better than another. The kernel of their stuff is that power laws really are an empirical reality that has not been very well dealt with or recognized by most economists. (For the uninitiated, these imply the "fat tails," or leptokurtosis, that we see in all financial returns time series, that arise from the extreme volatility, the bubbles and crashes in these financial markets that generate all that "fictitious capital," extreme observations that would not occur in a normal or Gaussian distribution). OTOH, the origins of this kind of analysis go all the way back to Bachelier in 1900 and includes work by Pareto not much later, as well as by Mandelbrot in the early 1960s. Although the latter is a mathematician primarily, the former two were more economists than anything else. A problem with much of the econophysics lit is that many of these people know little econ. They have some simple-minded view of what econ is all about and so appear among economists acting like they are here to save us from all our ignorance and stupidity. There is certainly plenty of that around, but it does not help when the would-be savior barely knows what he is talking about in econ, even if his math is hot and his physics is maybe also, sort of, atlhough this is definitely now a major fad and so we (or at least I) are (am) seeing a lot of it that is very crappy. Much of this appearing in physics journals, e.g. Physical Review E and Physica D, although there is now a new journal edited by both economists and physicicsts, Quantitative Finance, which is pretty good and where a lot of it is now appearing. A lot of Sornette's original papers have appeared there. The founder of it is the old chaos theorist and physicist from the Santa Fe Institute, J. Doyne Farmer. I think there is a lot of interest going on here, but the economists and the physicists need to keep in better communication along the way. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 2:48 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Complexity > On Wed, 18 Jun 2003 16:57:17 -0400, Barkley Rosser > wrote: > > > > > Briefly, there were > > indeed "intellectual bubbles" regarding cybernetics, > > catastrophe theory, chaos theory, and complexity > theory, > > which rose and then fell. > > What's your view on Didier Sornette and log-periodic > power laws? Another intellectual bubble developing? > I've got his "Why Stock Markets Crash" and there is > some good stuff there, but he appears to be trying to > extend his theory into a general principle of stock > market movements. HE's also predicted economic > collapse somewhere around 2050, which is usually the > economic iconoclast's equivalent of jumping the shark. > > dd >
Re: Complexity
Sabri, The fad phase of cybernetics was the 1950s and 1960s. Today it lives in modern complexity stuff. The fad phase of catastrophe theory was the 1970s. Today it is dead, except when appearing under other names, which it is increasingly doing so again. The fad phase for chaos theory was the 1980s, at the end of which was when the Wiggins book appeared. Today, chaos theory is just normal science. The fad phase for complexity was the 1990s, and it is now essentially normal science also, broken down into all its constituent parts, which are very much alive. Somebody commented that an important aspect of this involves journalists hyping things with schlocky books that sell a lot and make money. For chaos theory the biggie was by James Gleick, 1987. For complexity it was Waldrop in 1992. These also bring out the overhyping debunkers, with Horgan's End of Science, 1996, being the model. The first batch overhype and the second batch overdehype. One sign of all this is to look at the mathematicians, who, although also subject to a certain amount of faddism, tended to be much less affected by all this and, especially the Russian ones, maintained more reasoned views on these things. Thus they never hyped catastrophe theory all that much, seeing it as a perfectly respectable and useful sub-branch of bifurcation theory. Therefore, they never felt the need to purge it and ignore it, as did the lesser breeds like the economists, who are so busy trying to show what hot-ass mathoids they are, even worse than their physics envy, that they must huff and puff to keep up (and down) with these various manifestations of "fictitious intellectual capital." The most level-headed book on catastrophe theory is by Vladimir Arnol'd, a Russian, Catastrophe Theory, 3rd edn., 1992, Springer-Verlag. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Sabri Oncu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 8:27 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Complexity > Les: > > > i agree chaos and complexity studies have a > > fad __component__. > > Les, > > As I know it, fad means craze, trend, mania and the like. In that > sense, anyone who knows some math knows that chaos is a fad. Take > a look at the Preface of that beautiful book by Stephen Wiggins > where he says: > > "Finally, although nonlinear dynamics and chaos have become > something of a fad over a decade it is still true that an > understanding of nonlinear phenomena requires a solid > mathematical background and a lot of hard work." > > Topology was like that too at some point, although it never got > the publicity chaos did, but this does not mean that topology is > useless or irrelevant. Nor chaos as a theory is useless or > irrelevant. Of course, it is useful and relevant. Even game > theory can be useful, dispite my doubts. But none of these have > anything to do with their "fadness", whatever that means. When > you are an insider, you view things differently. > > > your friend is missing something. > > I doubt it. People like him don't miss much in such regards. By > the way, at some point in his mathematics career he said, I am > not gonna finish this PhD and started to read about the history > of art. About the same time I started reading about the history > of Jazz, so this is why I remember it. > > > what does he think of Goedel's work??? to my mind his > > theorem highlights BOTH the strengths and weaknesses of > > axiomatic systems, as he utiliized ingenious techniques > > to derive said theroems. > > I better put you in touch with him so that he can answer your > question personally. He was the first person from whom I heard > about Goedel and at the time he was 18 and I was 17. > > Best, > > Sabri > > PS: Is Marsden you mentioned is Jerry Marsden? >
Re: Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
Barkley, he's in charge of the nuclear program at DOE. Worried now? Barkley Rosser wrote: Michael, Not to worry..yet. This clown is from DOE, not DOD or DOJ or HOS. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "michael perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 11:00 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Friendly advice from the government??? to the list I got this note this morning. I get plenty of complaints about the archives, but this one is different. from: "Chilman, Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Chilman, Walter" wrote: Dear Michael... one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of those. http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the benefit of other people. Ivan Hild -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fictitious Capital website
Supposedly the model for Lenin of state planning of the economy was the wartime planning by the Imperial German government during WW I, not quite full blown fascism, but sure as hell not socialism either. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Max B. Sawicky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 11:39 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website > I don't think it's an either (wholesale destruction . . . etc.) > or (planning). > > I would say planning is part of fascism. It entails plans > by select interests to crush or swallow up competing ones, > as well as to milk the working class. > > I see a fair amount of such planning right here. The Dept > of Defense is one big planned economy. Favored albeit un- > profitable firms are kept on life support. Contracts are > awarded without regard to competition. Homeland Security is > evolving in the same direction. > > Agri subsidies are a type of planning too. > > I agree that the wholesale destruction etc. distinguishes fascism > more from non-fascism than does planning in the abstract. But > absent personal study of the matter, I hazard the guess that fascist > planning is qualitatively different from non-fascist dirigisme of > the present US regime, the center, or the social democracy. > > mbs > > > > > To put it as succinctly as possible, this has more in common with > anarchism than it does with Marxism. Fascism is not about "planning". It > is about the wholesale destruction of trade unions and socialist parties > in order to maximize the power of corporations and pave the way for wars > of conquest. If one cannot tell the difference between Nazi Germany on > one hand, and social democratic Sweden or revolutionary Cuba on the > other, then one needs to revisit v. 1 of Capital, which might be > inadequate in terms of an understanding of fictitious capital but quite > good on the question of commodity production. > > -- > > The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org >
Re: Fictitious Capital website
Title: RE: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website Goldner writes: >>Out of this pre-1914 reality, and the defeats of the revolutions of 1917-21, came the "planning states" of the 1930s―Stalinist, fascist, corporatist, Social Democratic, Keynesian, Third World Bonapartist<< Michael Hoover quotes Louis Proyect: > To put it as succinctly as possible, this has more in common with anarchism than it does with Marxism. Fascism is not about "planning". It is about the wholesale destruction of trade unions and socialist parties in order to maximize the power of corporations and pave the way for wars of conquest.< Socialists and non-anarchists (including yours truly) should show some modesty. Just because an idea or theory is linked to anarchism doesn't mean that it's wrong, just as the fact that an idea or theory is linked to socialism (or self-styled socialism) doesn't mean that it's right. It's true that the anarchist projects of the last 120 years or so has been a failure, but then again, the same can be said for the socialist ones. It's possible to learn from anarchists by critically reading their theory, just as it's posssible to learn from socialists in the same way. Maybe Stalinism is about planning, but like the fascists, Stalin suppressed independent trade unions and independent socialist parties (or ended their independence). I don't agree with the "Stalinism = fascism = totalitarianism" theory, but the worst of socialism and the worst of capitalism share a lot of empirical characteristics. (They also differ.) Jim
Re: Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
Michael, Not to worry..yet. This clown is from DOE, not DOD or DOJ or HOS. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "michael perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 11:00 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Friendly advice from the government??? to the list > I got this note this morning. I get plenty of complaints about the archives, > but this one is different. > > from: "Chilman, Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > "Chilman, Walter" wrote: > > > Dear Michael... > > > > one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what > > should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected > > with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to > > someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of > > those. > > > > http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ > > > > and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even > > flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the > > benefit of other people. > > > > Ivan Hild > > -- > > Michael Perelman > Economics Department > California State University > Chico, CA 95929 > > Tel. 530-898-5321 > E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
Re: Fictitious Capital website
Well, I am way too busy to check out this new site, indeed will probably be getting off this one tomorrow (was up to 6 AM this morning working). But the term "fictitious capital" way predates Marx. Adam Smith used it and I think it probably originated with Richard Cantillon, who was a successful speculator in both the Mississippi Bubble in France of 1719 and the related South Sea Bubble in England of 1719-20. Marx adds some spice to these earlier discussions, but not anything really profoundly new. I would note that the master of this list wrote a quite good book on this subject, which may be why he was approached about this new list. Any comments on this matter, Michael? Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 10:48 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website I want to urge Marxmail and PEN-L subscribers to take a look at the Fictitious Capital website (www.munism.com) that was announced recently and specifically at the Introduction. It has all the strengths and weaknesses of the sort of left-communism that the webmaster Loren Goldner is associated with. Whatever theoretical disagreements I have with Goldner, he is certainly a provocative thinker whose collected articles appear on the "Break their Haughty Power" website at: http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/. Goldner shares many of the anti-Bolshevik prejudices of the autonomist and anarchist currents, but like other left-communists such as Paul Mattick this does not prevent him from developing some thought-provoking analyses of the capitalist economy. While I am in no position to answer his claim that the Marxist left has failed to understand the importance of fictitious capital (an understanding that can only be advanced by a thorough grounding in v.2 & 3 of Capital, a task remains in my 'to-do' bin), I do have some queasiness about whether this "is at the heart of today’s situation." My guess is that imperialist war and semi-colonial resistance has much more weight. I also wonder if Goldner is elevating one aspect of the Marxist analysis to a place all out of proportion to its original weight, in a manner somewhat similar to John Holloway's fetishization of the term fetishization. At any rate, Goldner at least writes in clear, direct language unlike the fogbound Holloway. My comments will be limited to areas that I have a glancing familiarity with, the first of which deals with the business of a "socialist program". Goldner writes: "Socialist program, in short, has to insist on how little a mature transition out of capitalism would look like the contemporary world. The capitalists have a full program for society that reaches far beyond the point of production, but the left offers nothing of the kind. Above and beyond this type of analysis, the purpose of this website is to make that kind of program palpable. This programmatic vacuum of the left is at least partly responsible for the ebb of struggle that has taken over the United States and much of Europe in the past three decades." Might I suggest that this is entirely the wrong approach? It will lead inexorably in the direction of a kind of utopian socialism that characterizes much of the left today, from Albert-Hahnel's Parecon to the various schemas of the market socialists ranging from Mondragon writ large to John Roemer's Basic Vouchers (BV's). I hold out the possibility that Goldner will not come up with blueprints for a future socialist society and will limit himself to "minimum transitional demands" such as "Dismantling of the dollar-based global financial system and of fictitious capital in all its forms". I must say, however, that this strikes me as neither minimum in the Social Democratic sense nor transitional in the Leon Trotsky sense. All in all, the call for dismantling of the dollar-based global financial system, etc." has a certain maximal quality, if you gather my drift. I also obviously have criticisms of his failure to draw a clear class distinction between capitalist society and societies in transition between capitalism and socialism. Goldner writes: >>Out of this pre-1914 reality, and the defeats of the revolutions of 1917-21, came the “planning states” of the 1930s—Stalinist, fascist, corporatist, Social Democratic, Keynesian, Third World Bonapartist—which held sway into the 1960s and early 1970s. For most of the postwar period, even conservatism in the West was generally resigned to the spread of this kind of statism, consciously seeing itself as mainly trying to slow down its inevitable triumph. The spread of this kind of statism from the 1930s to the 1960s set the stage for the vast “antibureaucratic” mood of the 1960s revolt, where “the” question was posed everywhere in terms of “bureaucracy” vs. “democracy,” above all in the strike waves in Britain, the United States, France, Italy and Poland. Planning itself acquired a purely technocratic, eliti
Re: Fictitious Capital website
Louis Proyect: Goldner writes: >>Out of this pre-1914 reality, and the defeats of the revolutions of 1917-21, came >>the "planning states" of the 1930s―Stalinist, fascist, corporatist, Social >>Democratic, Keynesian, Third World Bonapartist<< To put it as succinctly as possible, this has more in common with anarchism than it does with Marxism. Fascism is not about "planning". It is about the wholesale destruction of trade unions and socialist parties in order to maximize the power of corporations and pave the way for wars of conquest. <<<>>> while fascism was about latter rather than former, it was planned in seeking to subordinate capitalism to ideological objective of fascist state... oswald mosely, who led british union of fascists, maintained: 'capitalism is a system by which capital uses the nation for its own purposes. Fascism is a system by which the nation uses capital for its own purposes'... of course, fascists attempted to resolve 'conflict' between ideology and profit so as to alter character of economic system in favor of national purposes in various ways: abolition of unearned income, employment programs, expropriation of 'excessive' profits, interference in loan capital and interest, nationalization, profit-sharing, etc... italian and german fascists both tried to use big business for political ends via selective nationalization and state regulation, nazis was reorganized german economy into 'war economy' after 1936: german capital thrived during re-armament run-up to war, war itself resulted in wholesale destruction of german industry... given marxist critique of fascism as tool of monopoly capital, it is kind of strange to see extent of antagonism to capitalism in fascist writings by likes of nazis dietrich eckhart, gottfried feder, gregor strasser, aforementioned brit mosley, spanish falangist primo de rivera, french fascist drieu de rochelle... in contrast, italian fascists such as giovanni gentile and alfredo rocco referred to 'liberalism' in their critique of individualism, they were generally committed to a market economy in which corporations/ syndicates organized themselves with state direction... michael hoover
Re: Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, Hatch says
The guy retired in the mid 80's after messing with computers for 30 years. He was pretty sick of them and only got a pc last xmas. He was no dummy and my friend' [MS with honors in enviro. engineering, Johns Hopkins] only lack of judgement is his relationship with me. Ian - Original Message - From: "Barkley Rosser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 1:08 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, Hatch says > The really bizarre twist in this tale is that this > guy's dad was still unaware of google's capabilities > as recently as last Christmas? This guy does not > appear to have been one of the CIA's leading lights. > Barkley Rosser > - Original Message - > From: "ravi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 6:53 PM > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, > Hatch says > > > > Ian Murray wrote: > > > > > > Btw, my college roommate's father used to work for the CIA. In the 60's > he > > > and some others went to IBM requesting a Google like technology. The > folks > > > at IBM told them it was impossible to build and they didn't mean it in > > > 'not with current technology' sense. My friend showed his dad Google > when > > > he was home this past Xmas holiday, his dad was freakin'... > > > > > > > > > that's pretty surprising. after all, afaik, there is nothing rocket > > science in google's search technology, and the guys at t.j.watson > > weren't idiots... > > > > --ravi > >
tax competition/arbitrage
States expected to flood Boeing with 7E7 bids Thursday, June 19, 2003 By PAUL NYHAN AND CHARLES POPE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS States will blanket The Boeing Co. with proposals tomorrow -- everything from $100 million in tax breaks in Palmdale, Calif., to decades of tax abatements in Michigan -- in the battle for the next U.S. manufacturing prize: the 7E7 jet. Tomorrow is the deadline for any town, city or state to file proposals for Boeing's proposed 7E7 final assembly plant. While the process is clouded in secrecy, lawmakers are compiling perks to win the prestige and thousands of jobs that will accompany the project. "It's very difficult for governors and mayors to resist playing the game," said William Schweke, research director at the Corp. for Enterprise Development. Washington wasn't shy about playing, publicizing much of its offer last week when state lawmakers approved billions of dollars in Boeing-related tax breaks, unemployment system reforms and other perks. "We're trying to anticipate what the other states might offer -- what they (other states) have typically offered, whether it's a Mercedes-Benz plant or a Toyota plant," Gov. Gary Locke said yesterday after signing into a law a package that could save Boeing and its Washington contractors a projected $3.2 billion over 20 years. Now, the rest of the nation gets a crack at the nation's largest commercial aircraft maker. Michigan, for example, will try to boost its chances by proposing three sites and enticing Boeing with its existing menu of tax breaks. The state can abate state business taxes for 20 years, while local communities can roll back taxes for 12 years, according Jennifer Owens, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Economic Development Corp. Two thousand miles away in Palmdale, Calif., the region highlighted its tax breaks -- enterprise zones and foreign trade assistance -- a former Boeing facility and a near-perfect flying weather. In fact, California is investigating a range of incentives that could alleviate utility costs and help employee training, according to Jason Kimbrough, a spokesman for California Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency. Tomorrow, California may offer Boeing at least the widest range of options, with as many as 10 communities, including Long Beach and Palmdale, interested in assembling the 7E7. But California and Michigan offered only a sample of what will be roughly 35 proposals. Most states declined to discuss anything they might use to lure Boeing. The entire process is designed to be confidential, with some of Washington's biggest potential rivals, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina saying little or nothing about the competition. Regions will file their proposals with Boeing's consultant, South Carolina-based McCallum Sweeney, which is expected to quickly narrow the list down to several serious contenders. Boeing's 7E7 site-selection team will perform a thorough analysis of each. A decision will be made before the end of the year. What local officials are not discussing may be the most interesting. They could decide to tuck juicy incentives into their offers. Or the sweetest offers may not come until well after tomorrow's deadline. In Fort Worth, Texas, officials are discussing incentives, but the debate will intensify if Boeing selects the city as a finalist, according to Bob Farley, one of the authors of Fort Worth's proposal and executive vice president at the Fort Worth Chamber Commerce. Current and future incentives, however, are only so useful as bait. "Our priority is to make sure the process is fair and rigorous, " said Boeing spokeswoman Mary Hanson. "The proposals are going to be weighed against all criteria," In May, the company outlined that criteria, such as a 24-hour port, which appeared to place Fort Worth and other candidates at a disadvantage. The absence of deep water, though, didn't discourage Fort Worth lawmakers. Members of Congress from the area sent a letter to Boeing last month all but begging the company to build the plane there. The city is considered a serious candidate because it was one of the finalists for Boeing's corporate headquarters. In the letter, Texas lawmakers highlighted the area's central location and its existing network of aviation companies. Despite expressing confidence in their offer, Texas officials remain concerned. The biggest concern, they say, is Fort Worth's distance from a seaport. Houston is the closest at 270 miles and Corpus Christi is 400 miles. Texas lawmakers and economic development officials have been struggling in the final days to find a way to minimize that deficiency, said two officials who asked not to be identified. They are not alone. One California official wondered how the state could match Washington's billions of dollars in promised aid. "Clearly it's impressive what Washington has been able to come up with. Given California's fiscal crisis it is going to be a challenge to come up with something lik
Re: Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, Hatch says
Title: RE: [PEN-L] Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, Hatch says worse, may he is one of the CIA's leading lights... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > -Original Message- > From: Barkley Rosser [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 1:08 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Remotely destroy computers if music pirates > persist, Hatch says > > > The really bizarre twist in this tale is that this > guy's dad was still unaware of google's capabilities > as recently as last Christmas? This guy does not > appear to have been one of the CIA's leading lights. > Barkley Rosser > - Original Message - > From: "ravi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 6:53 PM > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Remotely destroy computers if music > pirates persist, > Hatch says > > > > Ian Murray wrote: > > > > > > Btw, my college roommate's father used to work for the > CIA. In the 60's > he > > > and some others went to IBM requesting a Google like > technology. The > folks > > > at IBM told them it was impossible to build and they > didn't mean it in > > > 'not with current technology' sense. My friend showed his > dad Google > when > > > he was home this past Xmas holiday, his dad was > freakin'... > > > > > > > > > that's pretty surprising. after all, afaik, there is nothing rocket > > science in google's search technology, and the guys at t.j.watson > > weren't idiots... > > > > --ravi > > >
Re: Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, Hatch says
The really bizarre twist in this tale is that this guy's dad was still unaware of google's capabilities as recently as last Christmas? This guy does not appear to have been one of the CIA's leading lights. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "ravi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 6:53 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Remotely destroy computers if music pirates persist, Hatch says > Ian Murray wrote: > > > > Btw, my college roommate's father used to work for the CIA. In the 60's he > > and some others went to IBM requesting a Google like technology. The folks > > at IBM told them it was impossible to build and they didn't mean it in > > 'not with current technology' sense. My friend showed his dad Google when > > he was home this past Xmas holiday, his dad was freakin'... > > > > > that's pretty surprising. after all, afaik, there is nothing rocket > science in google's search technology, and the guys at t.j.watson > weren't idiots... > > --ravi >
On current credit system
About current credit system and fictitious capital, I Think below; (B (BAnalysis of contemporary capitalism (B (B In the historical disputes among various Marxist parties, there have been (Bmany problems at issue for the development of capitalism,for example, the (Blaw of capitalist development, the agricultural problems, the theory of (Bimperialism etc. (B Today the development of the credit system has made a great change in the (Bindustrial structure of the imperialistic countries and as a matter of (Bcourse the credit system should be clarified as a theoretical problem. In (B $B!! (Jspite of this, the problem has not been adequately dealed with by any (Brevolutionary left party, to say nothing of established left parties. (B On the definite purpose for increasing the cpital acccumulation and (Bcreating its technical basis, the bourgeois class have engaged in a shrap (Bcontroversy on transformation of the industrial structure and development of (Bcredit system $B!! (Jamong themselves. This transformation of the capitalist mode (Bof accumulation has changed the ordinary consciousness of the mass which (Breflected in the ideological world. But the left parties have been far (Boblivious to this. (B (B (B1.What made capital commoditified (B (B It is now popular among modern theorist to regard money as a symbol. As (Bshown in the assertion of the disintegration of the proletarian class in the (Bclassical sense and the denying of the labor theory of value with (Bcommoditification of money, the ideological dissolution of Marxism has been (Bin progress systematically. (B The symbol theory of money is an old theory and many studies have been made (Bin the field of primitive money theory. The question is why this theory has (Bbeen removed from its original field of the primitive money theory and (Bapplied to the present economic situation. (B With the development of the credit system, capital has been so extensively (Bcommoditified that it can represent itself as a commodity in general. (B The price of commoditified capital is determined indifferent from its (Boriginal value. Its price mechanism isn't the same as that of commodity in (Bgeneral. Capital is self-increasing value and embodied abstract human (Blabor., but the price of commoditified capital can't be determined through (Bits content. Through amplifying this mechanism to the law of price (Bmechanism, the fact that the value of commodities is determined with the (Bamount of abstract human labor and money is generated from commodities as (Bsuch will be denied. (B In fact, the price of commoditified capital is determined with dividing the (Bgross profit into interest and entrepreneur's profit, but in superficies (Binterest is shown as a product of the credit system which represents itself (Bas an illusionary communal behaviors. Consequently it is proper to explain (Bthe price of mechanism of commoditified capital by the use value of money as (Ba symbol , that is, a mediator of illusionary communal behavior. (B Thus the money in the symbol theory, different from the primitive theory of (Bmoney ,is just an embodiment of capital, and after all it is a capital (Brelation that is symbolized here. However, how the capital relation is (Bembodied in the money can't be seen in superficies. So those who advocate (Bthe symbol theory can't understand this context and just suppose the content (Bof this symbol as a communal subjectivity or communal illusion. (B (B2.On the the study of credit theory (B (BThe symbol theorists pull ahead to understand the movement of the (Bcommoditified capital through the appearances irrespective of the real (Bcapital relation, to grasp it within the framework of the ordinary (Bcommodity, and then to formulate it based on the law of movement as (Bcommodity in general. (B Against such prevailing thinking many kind of Marxists, although they only (Backnowledge $B!! (Jthemselves to be so, have expressed their critical opinions. (BBut , in general, their contents are that the above thinking is just (Bmodification of Marx's theory of commodity and money, and that it conceals (Bthe exploitation of capital in the direct production process to distort the (Blaw of the real capital movement. Thus they can't criticize it on the (Bclarification for commoditification of capital ,which has in original, (Bproduced such thinking.. All with this the thinking can't be fundamentally (Bctiricized, and those opinions seems to be out of date, or, as a case may (Bbe, tend to subordinate to the Stalinist propositions. (B It is already clear that such theoretical delay in the defensive parties of (BMarxism can just overcome through the radical solution of commoditified (Bcapital and its movement law. (B Thus it is urgent need to study the credit theory, but the significance of (Bthe study is not confined to this. (B The most important is that with the development of the credit system an
"We're becoming like the Palestinians"
Frustration and Foreboding in Fallujah For Men at Mosque, U.S. Occupation Is Focus of Anger and Reflection of Unmet Expectations By Anthony Shadid Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, June 19, 2003; Page A16 FALLUJAH, Iraq, June 18 -- A little before 1 p.m., in a city seething with discontent, the men emerged from the washroom, their wet faces glistening under a searing sun. A woman in a long black abaya sat expectantly at the steel gate of the Shaker Thahi Mosque, seeking alms from gathering worshipers. From a scratchy loudspeaker sounded the phrase "God is greatest," repeated four times. The crowd of men paused at the call to prayer, a gesture of respect. But only for a moment. "I'm angry! I'm angry at this filthy life!" shouted Adnan Mohammed, who was wearing a soiled blue tunic called a dishdasha. "We're becoming like the Palestinians," added another worshiper, 27-year-old Khaled Abdullah. "The Americans should get out of our city. It's a Muslim city. We're a Muslim country," cried out Shihab Mohammedi, as the muezzins' chants echoed among the market's minarets. "Who said they were liberators? Liberators from whom?" So went another conversation in the Sunni Muslim city that has emerged as a center of resistance to the American occupation of Iraq. Since arriving in Fallujah on April 23, U.S. troops charged with securing the peace have fired on protesters, fallen victim to hit-and-run attacks, staged nighttime raids and carried out hundreds of arrests. They have also painted schools, put up blackboards, handed out food and distributed soccer balls in an effort to salve the anger in this city 35 miles west of Baghdad. A day at the mosque, a run-of-the-mill place of worship located in a prosperous market, provides a sobering glimpse of how deep, perhaps irreconcilable, run the differences between the occupied and the occupiers. Inside the mosque's brick walls, across a courtyard paved with colored tiles, the men described a city agitated by unmet expectations and seized by grievances spanning not only nearly two months of U.S. occupation but also three decades of Saddam Hussein's rule. They grapple with a faith and nation they fear are under siege, giving rise to talk of conspiracies. And they warn that the months ahead will witness greater resistance, even as they dismiss the Baath Party's alleged role in plotting the campaign. "The Americans are planning, organizing and working, but they don't realize that they're putting a noose around their necks," said Ahmed Mohammed, 36, the owner of the Islamic Bookstore across the street from the mosque. full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10999-2003Jun18.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Empire
Nation review | Posted June 19, 2003 The Empire Strikes Back by Anatol Lieven American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy by Andrew J. Bacevich Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World by Walter Russell Mead Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power by Niall Ferguson Immanuel Wallerstein by Eoin Neeson The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power by Max Boot Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri A few years in Washington, DC, snake-oil capital of the universe, and you begin to think that anything can be packaged as something else. Well, almost anything. Until I read Empire, by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, I would never have believed that a postmodernist paean to Italian anarcho-syndicalism could be presented by its publishers as a defense of "the idealism of the Founders and Abraham Lincoln," and of the universal validity of the US Constitution. This wonderful joke is the best thing about Hardt and Negri's book, which otherwise is distinguished by a clarity of language and coherence of thought processes that suggest an Italianate Finnegans Wake. Its history is often quite fanciful. Its portrait of the liberating work practices of the postmodern industrial proletariat would seem to be drawn from the life of a SoHo fashion designer. Its vision of the improving possibilities of bioengineering as far as the mass of humanity is concerned displays an extraordinary naïveté concerning the realities of wealth and power. As for its vision of a modern world "empire," this is not without interest as a portrait of certain aspects of "globalization," but the authors' attempts to define this picture as an "empire," and to distinguish "empire" both from "imperialism" and from contemporary American hegemony are strained, to say the least. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that this curious choice of the word "empire" as a name for these patterns of globalization reflects the new modishness of empire as a subject--as witnessed by the number of books now appearing on this theme. Only a few years ago, to use this word to describe the United States would have branded you automatically as a member of the left. Today, it is being taken up by writers across the spectrum, and with unbridled pride by right-wingers like Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal. But, as Niall Ferguson notes in the conclusion to his vivid and often insightful history of the British Empire, this new open popularity of empire as a self-description in the United States is so far characteristic only of intellectuals. As far as the mass of the American people is concerned, this is still "an empire in denial." And in presenting its imperial plans to the American people, the Bush Administration has been careful to package them as something else: on the one hand, as part of a benevolent strategy of spreading American values of democracy and freedom; on the other, as an essential part of the defense not of an American empire, but of the American nation itself. This is something that must be stressed if the power and the danger, but also the fragility, of the Bush program are to be understood: The United States under Bush is driving toward empire, but the domestic political fuel being fed into the engine is that of a wounded and vengeful nationalism. This sentiment is for the most part entirely sincere, and all the more dangerous for that. If recent history is any guide, there is probably no more dangerous element in the nationalist mix than a sense of righteous victimhood. Will this fuel continue to be available to the Bush Administration in its drive for empire? Or to put it another way, will the packaging retain its shine? This depends partly on whether the United States comes under further massive attack by Islamist terrorists, but still more on the extent of the sacrifices that ordinary Americans will be called upon to make for the sake of empire. An unwillingness on the part of the masses to make serious sacrifices for empire is hardly new. As Ferguson points out, until the First World War the British Empire was conquered and run very much on the cheap, and this was true of the other colonial empires as well. The Royal Navy was of course expensive, but then it doubled as the absolutely necessary defense of the British Isles themselves against invasion or blockade. Then as now, given the overwhelming superiority of Western firepower and military organization, enormous territories could be conquered at very low cost and risk. When European empires ran into areas that were truly costly to conquer and hold--the British in Afghanistan, the Italians in Ethiopia--they tended to back off. And in Ferguson's view, the unprecedentedly high rate of casualties among white British troops in the Boer War helped initiate the process of British disillusionment with empire. Thi
Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
I got this note this morning. I get plenty of complaints about the archives, but this one is different. from: "Chilman, Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Chilman, Walter" wrote: > Dear Michael... > > one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what > should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected > with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to > someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of > those. > > http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ > > and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even > flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the > benefit of other people. > > Ivan Hild -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Begin Message --- Dear Michael... one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of those. http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the benefit of other people. Ivan Hild --- End Message ---
Re: Fictitious Capital website
I did not sense any insults. Yes, Marx did discuss government bonds as fictitious capital. It was a term used in classical political economy. On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 09:00:13AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: > I didn't mean to insult Loren Goldner. If anyone takes it that way, I'm > sorry. > > Am I correct to remember that Marx once referred to government bonds as > "fictitious capital" since they pay interest without representing a claim on > surplus-value? (They do represent a claim on tax revenues (net of transfer > payments?), which some Marxists see as coming from surplus-value.) -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fictitious Capital website
In a message dated 6/19/03 7:49:25 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >I want to urge Marxmail and PEN-L subscribers to take a look at the Fictitious Capital website (www.munism.com) that was announced recently and specifically at the Introduction. It has all the strengths and weaknesses of the sort of left-communism that the webmaster Loren Goldner is associated with.< Comment I agree with your basic outlook on this new website. This idea that "we" - revolutionaries of all kinds, have to create a "socialist program" is so tired and silly. The "introduction" was downright crazy. The lower section of the working class already know that it is poverty stricken and live in conditions of social decay. In describing the decay in society the author counter posed the emergence of gangsta rap music with the social revolutionary events that produced a Beethoven. Why is this even important? Gangsta Rap derived its name from the media. Its initial national anthem was a song called "Fuck The Police" by rap group "NWA" - Nigga with an Attitude. As I am reading this material the events in Benton Harbor Michigan was working themselves out. This spontaneous uprising against police authority was basically a "Fuck The Police" mini-social explosion. It is strongly suggested that one view a video of the 2001 "Up In Smoke Tour" featuring today's top "rap artist." The crowd appears predominately white, female and at one point collectively shout "I love Dick." I thought to myself, "nothing like that existed when I was young" - at least not on that scale. Rap captures a certain mood of alienation amongst the youth of America. If we were not at this specific of technology with the existence of the Internet, the proliferation of various websites speaking to burning social issues would take the form of newsprint - paper journals and newspapers. That is to say a revolutionary intelligencia of the proletarian masses is spontaneously forming in a way that reminds me of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The theory battle is to give this intelligencia an ideological and political shape, as well as some kind of organizational form. The idea that any one aspect of Marx Capital is "the key" to understanding and mastering the social process is a blind alley. "The key" is always mastering the practical activity of the masses and various strata of the working class in motion. The program of modern communism is basically twofold: "victory to the workers in their current struggle" and "We need help paying our bills because my money is fucked up" or what is generally understand as a line of advance that outlines the idea "from each according to their ability to each according to their need." Year 2003 may very well turn out to be a long hot summer if Benton Harbor is an indication. It's funny that a debate just concluded on Marxline about the different between a mass uprising and a mass movement. Marxline is mirroring the actual social process. I did reread the last two Chapters of Capital Vol. 2 and was already rereading major portions of Capital Vol. 3 dealing with credit capital and my reply on Marxline. For the life of me I do not really understand why this is important in as much as it is not possible to directly apply any of this to the social movement. Apparently fiction capital and credit capital is important to a section of our revolutionary intelligencia. Benton Harbor was not a turning point in the social struggle in my opinion but it is a sign of the times. Again the catalyst was the police. People in America instinctively know that the police have slowly moved from protectors of the public order to something like a criminal gang. "We need the police . . . but!" The separation of the police from the people is a slow process but it is well underway. Melvin P.
Re: Fictitious Capital website
Title: RE: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website I didn't mean to insult Loren Goldner. If anyone takes it that way, I'm sorry. Am I correct to remember that Marx once referred to government bonds as "fictitious capital" since they pay interest without representing a claim on surplus-value? (They do represent a claim on tax revenues (net of transfer payments?), which some Marxists see as coming from surplus-value.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > -Original Message- > From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 8:55 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website > > > Loren was influenced by L. Marcus, but says that he parted > ways once L. M. > went off the deep end. As I mentioned to Jim D. off list, Marx does > include a broader version of fic. capital in dealing with the > devalorization of real capital goods. > > On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 08:50:38AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: > > I remember encountering an author's almost-obsessive > fascination with > > "fictitious capital" when I picked up a book by Lyn Marcus > (who morphed into > > Lyndon Larouche). Maybe it's good to study such things, but > isn't Marx's > > concept of "fictitious capital" basically referring to > people attaching > > value to the prevent value of expected future profits (i.e., to > > speculation)? Sometimes that speculation pays off (as > expectations end up > > corresponding to actual surplus-value produced), sometimes > it doesn't. What > > am I missing? > > > > > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > > > > > > > > > > > -Original Message- > > > From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:49 AM > > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Subject: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website > > > > > > > > > I want to urge Marxmail and PEN-L subscribers to take a > look at the > > > Fictitious Capital website (www.munism.com) that was > > > announced recently > > > and specifically at the Introduction. It has all the strengths and > > > weaknesses of the sort of left-communism that the webmaster Loren > > > Goldner is associated with. Whatever theoretical > disagreements I have > > > with Goldner, he is certainly a provocative thinker whose > collected > > > articles appear on the "Break their Haughty Power" website at: > > > http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/. > > > > etc. > > -- > Michael Perelman > Economics Department > California State University > Chico, CA 95929 > > Tel. 530-898-5321 > E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
Re: Fictitious Capital website
Loren was influenced by L. Marcus, but says that he parted ways once L. M. went off the deep end. As I mentioned to Jim D. off list, Marx does include a broader version of fic. capital in dealing with the devalorization of real capital goods. On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 08:50:38AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: > I remember encountering an author's almost-obsessive fascination with > "fictitious capital" when I picked up a book by Lyn Marcus (who morphed into > Lyndon Larouche). Maybe it's good to study such things, but isn't Marx's > concept of "fictitious capital" basically referring to people attaching > value to the prevent value of expected future profits (i.e., to > speculation)? Sometimes that speculation pays off (as expectations end up > corresponding to actual surplus-value produced), sometimes it doesn't. What > am I missing? > > > Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > > > > > > -Original Message- > > From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:49 AM > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website > > > > > > I want to urge Marxmail and PEN-L subscribers to take a look at the > > Fictitious Capital website (www.munism.com) that was > > announced recently > > and specifically at the Introduction. It has all the strengths and > > weaknesses of the sort of left-communism that the webmaster Loren > > Goldner is associated with. Whatever theoretical disagreements I have > > with Goldner, he is certainly a provocative thinker whose collected > > articles appear on the "Break their Haughty Power" website at: > > http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/. > > etc. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
Kelley wrote: > At 11:12 AM 6/19/03 -0400, ravi wrote: > >> its a pity he has not applied his advice to his own idle scraps of >> thought! btw, is his name chilman or hild? > > It looks as if he's a little dimwitted, using a pseudonym and > forgetting that he has a from address that identifies him. > ;-) [hi kelley!] > Probably the influence of Outhouse which like to hide those things > lest the user's eyes burn out. I'm not seeing anything in his headers > to indicate that he forged the address, pretending to be Walter > [EMAIL PROTECTED] If it's a forgery, it's pretty dang good what with > the Message-id header: > > Message-id: > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > the message-id can be spoofed. we need to see michael's original headers to see the SMTP path the message took (at best we can at least tell if it was forged through an open relay). probably not worth the time? --ravi
Re: Fictitious Capital website
Title: RE: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website I remember encountering an author's almost-obsessive fascination with "fictitious capital" when I picked up a book by Lyn Marcus (who morphed into Lyndon Larouche). Maybe it's good to study such things, but isn't Marx's concept of "fictitious capital" basically referring to people attaching value to the prevent value of expected future profits (i.e., to speculation)? Sometimes that speculation pays off (as expectations end up corresponding to actual surplus-value produced), sometimes it doesn't. What am I missing? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > -Original Message- > From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:49 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [PEN-L] Fictitious Capital website > > > I want to urge Marxmail and PEN-L subscribers to take a look at the > Fictitious Capital website (www.munism.com) that was > announced recently > and specifically at the Introduction. It has all the strengths and > weaknesses of the sort of left-communism that the webmaster Loren > Goldner is associated with. Whatever theoretical disagreements I have > with Goldner, he is certainly a provocative thinker whose collected > articles appear on the "Break their Haughty Power" website at: > http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/. etc.
Re: against Chandler's Visible Hand
Bryce, Robert. 2002. Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, Jealousy and the Death of Enron with What Went Wrong at Enron Today (PublicAffairs). 222: "Skilling was able to convince a nearly constant parade of reporters that Enron's trading business was invincible. Other companies were going to explode as Enron figured out how to buy and sell every part of an individual company's traditional business. Enron was going to intermediate everything, commoditize everything. Just as Ford Motor Company didn't have to own the steel mill to build cars, Enron was going to speed the breakup of business in the world into its individual parts. "We believe that markets are the best way to order or organize an industrial enterprise, " Skilling told the Financial Times in June 2000. "You are going to see the deintegration (sic) of the business systems we have all grown up with." Durgin and Skinner, "Inside Track: The Guru of Decentralisation." -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
lazy Germans!
The new German stereotype: holiday-addicted and out to lunch
Jeevan Vasagar in Berlin
Thursday June 19, 2003
The Guardian
The German worker's reputation for being eager and industrious is under
attack, not from a xenophobic British tabloid but from the country's
economics minister.
Far from the stereotype of being diligent drudges, employees enjoy too
much time off and should work longer hours if the country is to be rescued
from recession, Wolfgang Clement said.
In a stinging criticism of Germany's holiday-addicted culture, he warned
the country was "at the very limit" as far as time off is concerned.
"If you compare our calendar of public holidays with other countries, it
is something that could make you start to worry," the minister told the
magazine Stern.
Next year a number of public holidays will fall at weekends, he said, and
because of that forecasters estimate there will be increased growth of
about 0.5%. "Now that could be something to celebrate - and to make you
think."
As visitors to Germany soon discover, the 35-hour working week is only the
tip of the iceberg in a country which appears hooked on taking time off.
Depending on where they live, Germans enjoy between 11 and 13 public
holidays a year, compared with eight bank holidays in Britain.
Callers to German offices at any time from late morning to mid-afternoon
regularly encounter the phrase: "He is at lunch." A call back in the
afternoon is often foiled by the "coffee and cake break".
It is common for public sector employees to leave work as early as
possible on Friday afternoons. There is even a saying to justify the
practice: "Freitag nach eins, macht jeder Seins" ("After 1pm on Friday,
it's me-time.") And when a public holiday falls on a Thursday, the usual
custom is to take Friday off as well.
The British work the longest hours in Europe, an average of 43.6 hours a
week.
In eastern Germany, members of the trade union IG Metall are on strike,
demanding their working week be reduced from 38 hours to match the west's
35. Mr Clement's remarks followed questions about the strike, which he
called "a conflict at the wrong time in completely the wrong place". In
his view, the east needs "local advantages" if it is to thrive.
But Klaus Zwickel, head of IG Metall, said: "Not a single new job will be
created by the scrapping of holidays and public days off, or bringing in
longer working hours."
Many of the public holidays mark Christian festivals, and the Catholic
church was also critical of Mr Clement.
The Guardian rang the press office of the German Employers' Federation for
a reaction. "They are all at lunch," the receptionist said at 11.55am.
"Call back in an hour."
Re: Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
At 11:12 AM 6/19/03 -0400, ravi wrote: > from: "Chilman, Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > "Chilman, Walter" wrote: > >>Dear Michael... >> >>one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what >>should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected >>with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to >>someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of >>those. >> >>http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ >> >>and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even >>flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the >>benefit of other people. >> >>Ivan Hild > its a pity he has not applied his advice to his own idle scraps of thought! btw, is his name chilman or hild? It looks as if he's a little dimwitted, using a pseudonym and forgetting that he has a from address that identifies him. Probably the influence of Outhouse which like to hide those things lest the user's eyes burn out. I'm not seeing anything in his headers to indicate that he forged the address, pretending to be Walter [EMAIL PROTECTED] If it's a forgery, it's pretty dang good what with the Message-id header: Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> At any rate, Hild and Chilman have both posted or had things posted about them which identify their residence as Falls Church, VA. This, of course, isn't proof that they are one and the same or that the Ivan Hild comments, below, can be linked to Chilman. Nonetheless, for entertainment purposes only, this is what Ivan has had to say about the plague of "minorityism". If you search on "ivan hild" he's also written on the importance of modern welfare programs, but I don't get what the final crack about "minorities" means. Anyone? (can ya tell, I'm procrastinating!) From Ivan Hild: Sir - In the letters column of the February issue there was a lively and thoughtful discussion of why so many whites continue to favor offering privileges to racial minorities. The explanation seems simple: In years past, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, in their position of social and economic dominance, displayed such a brutal contempt for non-WASP whites that the latter have never gotten the foul taste of ethnic insult out of their mouths. Therefore, just at a time when whites have more than a little reason to pull together against the common threat, the preconditions for racial solidarity just aren't there. One could argue that such historical abuses of whites by whites is a thing of the past and that bygones should be bygones. I wonder. It's still not difficult to an atmosphere of contempt for Italians, Slavs, and others in places like private country clubs, and an ethnic surname is still rare at the top rung of a corporation. The sting of WASP exclusivism alone explains why immigrant ethnics of the 1930s voted with Jews and blacks for Franklin Roosevelt, why their children voted for JFK, and why, even today, America's urban working class still pulls the Democratic lever. The problem is that whites in America - particularly upper level whites - have never extended their allegiance beyond their own subgroup. If white identity in this country fails to materialize (and it certainly looks anemic today), it will be because the dominant groups never played fair with the rest. This is the dirty little secret that goes far to explain why the nation continues to suffer the outrages of minorityism long past the point of reason. Ivan Hild, Falls Church (VA) http://www.commonsenseclub.com/pages/914issue/914issue.html Letter From Washington: Rites of Spring Washington (DC) has celebrated its annual spring festival of youth, this year with a Latin theme. Half a thousand teen-agers, mostly El Salvadoran, spent several days rioting, fire-bombing, looting, and torching municipal vehicles in a neighborhood that was called Mount Pleasant by its long-ago middle-class white inhabitants. The event was hardly over when the greater Latino community of 30,000 or so erupted with demands for "social justice," denouncing the city's black political establishment for its alleged anti-Hispanic racism. In a city other than Washington, the minority tactic of torch and terrorize might have worked, but Washington is 70 percent black. The city fathers reacted rudely to the very extortion tactics that blacks have used on whites for decades. Black politicos called the Central American stone-throwers "outrageous" and "irresponsible." A black DC councilman, H.R. Crawford, even suggested that the "undocumenteds" be deported. Blacks proceeded to raise anti-Hispanic grievances of their own, such as the fact that Latinos often vote Republican and seem to disappear disloyally into the white suburbs after one generation. Washington, like Miami, has become a laboratory for the new, multi-racial America in which white people hardly play a role. Blacks and Hispanics are finding that the third-world paradise that was supposed to follow the unthroni
Re: Fictitious Capital website
I don't think it's an either (wholesale destruction . . . etc.) or (planning). I would say planning is part of fascism. It entails plans by select interests to crush or swallow up competing ones, as well as to milk the working class. I see a fair amount of such planning right here. The Dept of Defense is one big planned economy. Favored albeit un- profitable firms are kept on life support. Contracts are awarded without regard to competition. Homeland Security is evolving in the same direction. Agri subsidies are a type of planning too. I agree that the wholesale destruction etc. distinguishes fascism more from non-fascism than does planning in the abstract. But absent personal study of the matter, I hazard the guess that fascist planning is qualitatively different from non-fascist dirigisme of the present US regime, the center, or the social democracy. mbs To put it as succinctly as possible, this has more in common with anarchism than it does with Marxism. Fascism is not about "planning". It is about the wholesale destruction of trade unions and socialist parties in order to maximize the power of corporations and pave the way for wars of conquest. If one cannot tell the difference between Nazi Germany on one hand, and social democratic Sweden or revolutionary Cuba on the other, then one needs to revisit v. 1 of Capital, which might be inadequate in terms of an understanding of fictitious capital but quite good on the question of commodity production. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
I am not sure if Walter/Ivan is really who he claims to be. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
michael perelman wrote: > I got this note this morning. I get plenty of complaints about the archives, > but this one is different. > > from: "Chilman, Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > "Chilman, Walter" wrote: > >>Dear Michael... >> >>one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what >>should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected >>with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to >>someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of >>those. >> >>http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ >> >>and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even >>flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the >>benefit of other people. >> >>Ivan Hild > its a pity he has not applied his advice to his own idle scraps of thought! btw, is his name chilman or hild? btw, thanks for the archives! --ravi
Re: Friendly advice from the government??? to the list
At 08:00 AM 6/19/03 -0700, michael perelman wrote: I got this note this morning. I get plenty of complaints about the archives, but this one is different. from: "Chilman, Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Wow! what a #*%!head! But nice move, now if anyone decided to search on his email address (or if Walter goes egosurfing often) then perhaps they'll come across his note, archived for all to smell! I normally, snip stuff like this, but I'll leave it so it'll get archived a second time. heh. kelley "Chilman, Walter" wrote: > Dear Michael... > > one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what > should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected > with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to > someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of > those. > > http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ > > and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even > flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the > benefit of other people. > > Ivan Hild -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Received: from hqwss.hr.doe.gov (hqwss-04.hr.doe.gov [146.138.198.150]) by bengal.ecst.csuchico.edu (8.12.5/8.12.5) with SMTP id h5JCr7cG024555 for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Thu, 19 Jun 2003 05:54:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 146.138.65.92 by hqwss.hr.doe.gov with ESMTP (Dept. of Energy SMTP Relay (MMS v4.7);); Thu, 19 Jun 2003 08:51:55 -0400 Received: by feexch-hub.fe.doe.gov with Internet Mail Service ( 5.5.2653.19) id ; Thu, 19 Jun 2003 08:51:37 -0400 Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 08:57:32 -0400 From: "Chilman, Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Server-Uuid: 0bf4d294-faec-11d1-a39a-0008c7246279 X-WSS-ID: 12EF6E61146892-01-02 X-Mozilla-Status2: Dear Michael... one notices, does not one, how the internet is getting loaded up with what should really be considered idle scraps of thought generally unconnected with anything meaningful and typically speaking of profound annoyance to someone doing honest research. You name is associated with at least one of those. http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pen-l/ and therefore as one empties his wastebasket from time to time, or even flushes his toilet, why not take this bit of crap off the internet for the benefit of other people. Ivan Hild
against Chandler's Visible Hand
Title: against Chandler's Visible Hand June 19, 2003/NY TIMES Specialization Is the Rage By VIRGINIA POSTREL SEARS is selling its credit card division, almost certainly to a specialized financial business. To let customers charge their purchases, retailers no longer have to run their own credit operations. Dell Computer doesn't make its own hardware. It assembles circuit boards and disk drives from specialized manufacturers. From payroll management to movie special effects, vertical integration is out. Specialization is in. Does your company need a new product? You can hire an industrial design firm like IDEO to create it. Want to set up shop online? Buy the services and software from Amazon. Are you selling electronic systems? Get Solectron and Flextronic to assemble them. " Wal-Mart is less integrated vertically than Sears at the turn of the 20th century," the economist Richard N. Langlois of the University of Connecticut wrote in an e-mail message, noting that Sears once "even manufactured some of its own products in its own factories." Amazon is less integrated still, and eBay even less so. Meanwhile, vertical mergers increasingly look like bad bets. The AOL Time Warner vision of combining editorial content and Internet services under the same corporate roof has turned out to be an expensive folly. Other media mergers based on the same theory, like Disney's acquisition of ABC, haven't done much better. Content and delivery don't need common owners. It's more flexible and efficient to specialize in one activity and then buy from or sell to a number of outside companies. Since the 1980's, American corporations have been disintegrating - not falling apart, but becoming more specialized. Revenues or production volumes may be as large as ever, but even big companies tend to combine fewer stages of production under the same corporate ownership. This trend presents a puzzle. As the business historian Alfred Chandler famously chronicled, the modern corporation succeeded in large measure by bringing many different stages of production under central ownership and control. In Mr. Chandler's account, "the visible hand of managerial coordination had replaced the invisible hand of the market," Professor Langlois explained in an article in the journal Industrial and Corporate Change. Why did vertical integration seem like the way to efficiency, predictability and riches? Was Mr. Chandler wrong? In his article, titled "The Vanishing Hand," Professor Langlois argues that Mr. Chandler's managerial revolution "was an organizational solution appropriate to its time and place." The Chandlerian corporation did not supplant specialization forever. It was essentially a stopgap measure, a way of reducing uncertainty in an underdeveloped economic environment. In high-volume operations like those that developed in the late 19th century, every part of the system has to operate reliably. "You want to make sure the ore gets to the smelting plant, that the metal gets to the steel mill, and the steel gets to the automobile factory - that all of this happens fast, and it happens at the right time," Professor Langlois explained in an interview. "To do this, you've really got to make sure there are no uncertainties in these various parts of the system. In the beginning, the easiest way, the cheapest way to do that was to use management as a buffer - to put people in charge and have these things under common control." Markets simply weren't thick enough to meet the new corporations' needs. In some cases, stages of production were entirely missing. In others, they weren't developed and competitive enough to be reliable. "What happened in the Chandlerian era," Professor Langlois said, "was that the need for buffering grew fast, but marketing-supporting institutions weren't able to cope with that, so you had to come up with a kind of second best, which was the large, vertically integrated firm." Over time, however, new companies and specialized institutions arose to provide once-missing services. Meanwhile, markets grew through trade and increasing populations. This growth allowed more and more specialized businesses to find niches - the process Adam Smith first identified in "The Wealth of Nations." To operate a meatpacking business in the 19th century, Gustavus Swift "had to own the company that made the railroad cars," Professor Langlois said. "He had to own the ice company. He had to own the distribution, the refrigerated warehouses." In today's developed markets, by contrast, Michael Dell could devise a similarly efficient logistics system using existing contractors. Similarly, Sears customers no longer need a special Sears credit card. They can use Visa and MasterCard. If Sears wants to offer its own branded card, it can contract with a financial services company to handle those operations. Today's companies combine "specialization of function" with "generalization of capabilities." Shippers are good at
Fictitious Capital website
I want to urge Marxmail and PEN-L subscribers to take a look at the Fictitious Capital website (www.munism.com) that was announced recently and specifically at the Introduction. It has all the strengths and weaknesses of the sort of left-communism that the webmaster Loren Goldner is associated with. Whatever theoretical disagreements I have with Goldner, he is certainly a provocative thinker whose collected articles appear on the "Break their Haughty Power" website at: http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/. Goldner shares many of the anti-Bolshevik prejudices of the autonomist and anarchist currents, but like other left-communists such as Paul Mattick this does not prevent him from developing some thought-provoking analyses of the capitalist economy. While I am in no position to answer his claim that the Marxist left has failed to understand the importance of fictitious capital (an understanding that can only be advanced by a thorough grounding in v.2 & 3 of Capital, a task remains in my 'to-do' bin), I do have some queasiness about whether this "is at the heart of today’s situation." My guess is that imperialist war and semi-colonial resistance has much more weight. I also wonder if Goldner is elevating one aspect of the Marxist analysis to a place all out of proportion to its original weight, in a manner somewhat similar to John Holloway's fetishization of the term fetishization. At any rate, Goldner at least writes in clear, direct language unlike the fogbound Holloway. My comments will be limited to areas that I have a glancing familiarity with, the first of which deals with the business of a "socialist program". Goldner writes: "Socialist program, in short, has to insist on how little a mature transition out of capitalism would look like the contemporary world. The capitalists have a full program for society that reaches far beyond the point of production, but the left offers nothing of the kind. Above and beyond this type of analysis, the purpose of this website is to make that kind of program palpable. This programmatic vacuum of the left is at least partly responsible for the ebb of struggle that has taken over the United States and much of Europe in the past three decades." Might I suggest that this is entirely the wrong approach? It will lead inexorably in the direction of a kind of utopian socialism that characterizes much of the left today, from Albert-Hahnel's Parecon to the various schemas of the market socialists ranging from Mondragon writ large to John Roemer's Basic Vouchers (BV's). I hold out the possibility that Goldner will not come up with blueprints for a future socialist society and will limit himself to "minimum transitional demands" such as "Dismantling of the dollar-based global financial system and of fictitious capital in all its forms". I must say, however, that this strikes me as neither minimum in the Social Democratic sense nor transitional in the Leon Trotsky sense. All in all, the call for dismantling of the dollar-based global financial system, etc." has a certain maximal quality, if you gather my drift. I also obviously have criticisms of his failure to draw a clear class distinction between capitalist society and societies in transition between capitalism and socialism. Goldner writes: >>Out of this pre-1914 reality, and the defeats of the revolutions of 1917-21, came the “planning states” of the 1930s—Stalinist, fascist, corporatist, Social Democratic, Keynesian, Third World Bonapartist—which held sway into the 1960s and early 1970s. For most of the postwar period, even conservatism in the West was generally resigned to the spread of this kind of statism, consciously seeing itself as mainly trying to slow down its inevitable triumph. The spread of this kind of statism from the 1930s to the 1960s set the stage for the vast “antibureaucratic” mood of the 1960s revolt, where “the” question was posed everywhere in terms of “bureaucracy” vs. “democracy,” above all in the strike waves in Britain, the United States, France, Italy and Poland. Planning itself acquired a purely technocratic, elitist aura, an activity of gray specialists. There was a certain convergence in the 1960s between the “antibureaucratic” revolts of the right and the New Left.<< To put it as succinctly as possible, this has more in common with anarchism than it does with Marxism. Fascism is not about "planning". It is about the wholesale destruction of trade unions and socialist parties in order to maximize the power of corporations and pave the way for wars of conquest. If one cannot tell the difference between Nazi Germany on one hand, and social democratic Sweden or revolutionary Cuba on the other, then one needs to revisit v. 1 of Capital, which might be inadequate in terms of an understanding of fictitious capital but quite good on the question of commodity production. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Complexity
Barkley wrote: > I think Ralph Abraham is a genius. i liked his cartoon books on dynamics very much. it was his text w/ Marsden and Ratiu that puts me to sleep. > He also discovered "chaotic hysteresis," although I am the one who > coined that term. can you send me your paper on this offlist, it sounds interesting? the one on your wesbite has no figures. other bubbles which have subsided some: 1.) chaos theory was going to point the way to a "solution" to turbulence. hasn't happened yet. 2.) complex dynamics projected onto low dimensional subspaces: nice idea, havent seen any actual implementation in a problem which begs for reduction of dimension. 3.) fractional dimension fad: there was a time when everyone published a fractional dimension for their time series. what was that supposed to prove??? les schaffer
RES: [PEN-L] Complexity
>What's your view on Didier Sornette and log-periodic power laws? Another intellectual bubble developing? I've got his "Why Stock Markets Crash" and there is some good stuff there, but he appears to be trying to extend his theory into a general principle of stock market movements. HE's also predicted economic collapse somewhere around 2050, which is usually the economic iconoclast's equivalent of jumping the shark. dd Well, Kondratieff in the 1920s spoke about 50-70 years cycles. This would give, for instance, 1929-1999-2049... Renato Pompeu
"openDemocracy" and the Gramscian project
I think on re-reading Louis Proyect's criticisms for this post, I did not do justice to them because they do criticise assumptions in Angela McRobbie's article that are one type of Gramscianism. But LP's post starts with a strident criticism of openDemocracy which attacks the article by association. I knew nothing about "openDemocracy" before this week. I was a little suspicous of the butterfly on the front page but it seemed a well-laid out web-site. "Our aims" look transparent: http://www.opendemocracy.net/about/index.jsp OpenDemocracy is a channel for knowledge, learning, participation and understanding that is not owned by a media corporation, does not serve a special interest and does not adhere to a single ideological position. With enough readers and members it will be a true arena for democratic change, for closing the distance between people and power, influencing global policy and will also be an enjoyable experience that shares knowledge across borders and differences. Funders and backers are openly declared http://www.opendemocracy.net/about/about_od_funding.jsp The Joseph Rowntree foundation is the sort of trust we often appealed to in the anti-apartheid movement. Yes this is not a specifically socialist project, (but nor was the anti-apartheid movement). Yes it is a project within bourgeois capitalist boundaries (but so was the anti-apartheid movement). It is trying to create a forum for global interchange, as many of us are by our contributions. Any enterprise that is associated with Jeremy Hardy's name would require more careful criticism on the left in England if the critic was not to lose credibility him- or herself. True I know no evidence that Jeremy Hardy is a marxist. But he is a very sincere and humourous biting critic of all centrist and right-wing hypocrisy. Perhaps he is just another subjective idealist, rather than a scientific socialist. Presumably New Yorkers would know more about the crimes and misdemeanours of Todd Gitlin than I would - I cannot see from Google whether he is professor of journalism now at New York or Columbia University. Roger Scruton is execrable, but may have been commissioned to contribute to command the range of debate, a bit in the way Marxism Today would. True Tony Giddens praises the enterprise "What people say about us" http://www.opendemocracy.net/about/about_od_people_say.jsp But would Tony Giddens be barred from this PEN-L list? Would he not add to the range of debate? And there is praise from George Monbiot. Goerge Monbiot may also not be a socialist. His book out later this year may include thoroughly reformist solutions for the world, but again in terms of a UK audience I would have thought a critic of a project he supports would need to consider their own credibility on the left in terms of how they may their criticisms. I would have thought a more balanced comment on openDemocracy would be the sort of observation Louis Proyect wrote about Salon (to which I see Gitlin has also contributed) last year: To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [PEN-L:27327] Salon faces bankruptcy Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have mixed feelings about the imminent collapse of Salon. I have been reading it ever since it was launched. Even after it switched to a paid subscription, I still looked for the occasional free article on their site, including the fascinating piece on Lord Buckley that I cross-posted the other day. Salon was a mixed bag politically, with a mixture of Nation Magazine liberalism and rightist crap, all packaged in a kind of snide Village Voice "aren't we all so clever" ribbon. - To be fair Louis Project does on re-reading criticise specific formulas in Angela McRobbie's article which probably relate also to the aims of "openDemocracy". I can see why her article would get published, and if Louis Proyect has ever submitted one, it might be turned down. However a more prepared debate might be a valuable contribution. I read LP to be contesting the way Gramsci's name is used, arguing that Gramsci did not make class compromises even during long periods of captivity and was a "Marxist". My reply would be broadly that Gramsci was certainly brave, and loyal to the traditions of the third international, but faced with the reality of fascism, his aesopian notebooks actually sketch out ideas that were consistent with the later united front line promoted by Georgi Dimitrov after the collapse of the class against class line. Gramsci and Dimitrov would have seen clear differences in the contribution of the working class to those of other strata in the struggle for political dominance, but Gramsci undoubtedly reconstrues "civil society" as an arena for struggle, whereas Marx, in his earlier writings wrote rather negatively about it as the social formation consistent with capitalist production relations. A recurring
