date:20040412

k hanly wrote:

Marx's hypothesis is surely not that it is a voluntary market transaction
but a forced transaction because the capitalists own the means of
production and the workers do not and have no means of access except
through wage slavery. They cannot themselves produce and support
themselves.Workers are forced into the transaction to keep themselves
alive. The theory that it is a voluntary transaction is part of the
capitalist ideology.
A voluntary market transaction doesn't mean that the will of those who enter
it is absolutely free, unencumbered.  Not even if you're very rich.  Again,
form is not irrelevant.  The form is of the essence.
And ideologies don't hang in the air.  They have social roots.

Let me say in passing that there are passages in Grundrisse where Marx
emphasizes the *progressive* effect of this legal form on concrete people.
Communism is not built from scratch.  And one of the progressive results of
capitalist development is that it forces people to take personal
responsibility for their individual and collective lives, as opposed to
relying on mystical forces or luck.  That is progress, because without this
individual sense of responsibility communism cannot be built.
But more relevant to our present, the conditions that impose unemployment on
people are socially made and the acquisition of a class consciousness
entails understanding the social source of this apparently natural event.
For some reason, some leftists in the U.S. seem to believe that anything
said about the progressive features of capitalist production amounts to
bourgeois propaganda.  Marx viewed alienation (the victimization of people
by the social conditions of their own making) as the problem, not as the
solution.  The solution was overcoming alienation in the only way it can be
overcome, collectively, by people transforming themselves into agents of
history.   Some radicals nowadays seem to think that alienation from public
life is a virtue, as if public life were an illusion.
It is not assymmetry of wealth that makes the voluntary part a sham it is
that the workers havent access to the means of production themselves.
Marx says explicitly that what's essential here is "the separation between
the direct producers and their objective or material conditions of
production" and living.  In Marx's terms, means of production are use values
used to produce other use values.  Use values are the "material content of
wealth" (Marx).  With markets, one form of wealth can be transformed into
other forms of wealth.  If you have sufficient oranges, with an orange
market plus a labor market (provided they are deep and "efficient"), you
have money or means of production ipso facto.  With markets you can turn use
values that are not fit to be used as means of production into means of
production.
So you're not saying anything different than I'm saying.

While we sometimes talk about capitalists and workers as if there were a
clear line of separation between them, in real life the distribution of
wealth is like a continuous curve and where precisely the line is drawn is
not hard science, but an empirical and political exercise.  Bottom line, it
is wealth inequality (or, as I put it, "wealth asymmetry") what turns the
market transaction between capital and labor into an exploitive sham.
It is not the market that explains the form of abusing it is the mode of
production. The mode of production involves the capitalist class owning the
means of production and producing for profit not on the basis of
need--except of course need backed by consumers willing to part with bucks.
It is because of the ownership of the means of production that the
capitalist can appropriate surplus value. It is a function of ownership not
of the market.
The capitalist mode of production is "generalized market production" (Marx).
 "Generalized" because inter alia the markets now include a labor market.
Capitalist production is not the only conceivable or historical form of
labor exploitation.  The essential distinction with other modes of
production is the widespread existence of markets, so that even the labor
power of workers is bought and sold in markets.  What underlies the
existence of a labor market is the dispossession and legal freedom of the
worker.  So the separation of workers from the objective conditions of
production is a necessary (but not a sufficient) condition for capitalist
production.  You can have a lot of poor proletarians (like in ancient Rome)
and not have capitalist production.  You still need generalized markets.  It
is the market (or commodity) form that makes the difference.  And what is
"ownership of the means of production" if not wealth ownership?
But markets require only private ownership of goods to be traded.
Capitalism requires private ownership of the menas of production.
And what are the means of production?  Non-goods?  Non-use values?

And functional capitalist markets do not require voluntary trades and
competition. Ha

Re: Houses of the People

2004-04-12 Thread Burkhart

+ What "houses of the people" exist today? What "radical spaces"
+ (democratic places by and for working people, not leftists/socialists
+ per se) might be created in the present/the future? How might this
+ happen? Michael Hoover

In a GLOBAL age brought in by GLOBAL telecom and transportation networks,
what is especially needed are GLOBAL spaces for GLOBAL democratic
dialogues. Are not these spaces beginning to exist in the form of the 
Internet (especially democratic list servers and discussion groups on the
Internet) and at forums such as the World Social Forum?

The value of such GLOBAL discussions in defense of the working person
civility, and the environment I believe to be immense, and the
need unparalleled. As we now have more coherent behaviors on a global 
basis, we need not just coherency in excess and exploitations -- which
seem to arise quite eagerly. Just as eagerly we should begin to see
coherency of interest in and movement towards global protections
to curb those excesses and exploitations. The dialogue is taking place
but needs to be expanded and amplified. Is this not true?

Going a step further, did we not in the United States establish the concept
of universal service for the telephone network based upon the democratic 
ideal of inclusion... Inclusion in the new discussion "SPACE" presented
by the telephone network? Why then now, should we global citizens not
work towards global universal service for Internet, as a highly democratic
global discussion space?

Reed

Re: capitalism's laws of motion

(My last posting for a while, Mike.)

James Devine wrote:

Capitalism always involves a contradiction between capital's interest (the
long-term interest of the capitalist class as a whole) and those of
competing individual capitalists. (One might liken this contradiction to
the "public goods problem" of orthodox economics, though of course there's
another contradiction that's more important, that between classes. So it's
a "collective goods problem" for the capitalists.)
I fully agree.

My only point here is that contradictions end up resolving themselves -- in
this case, politically.  As Marx says in Hegelian jargon, given the
conditions, a difference evolves into a contradiction, which in turn evolves
into an antagonism, which bursts and thus "reestablishes the unity"
(Grundrisse).  So I just tried to imagine what the end of the sequence would
be.
The interests of individual capitalists are tied to their collective
interest and, of course, vice versa.  It's a chicken and egg question or --
as we used to say -- dialectics.  If something makes sense for the class as
a whole, some individual capitalist mind comes up with the idea.  The idea
takes a while to be pondered, it is assaulted by the conventional wisdom,
impeded by hardened conditions, etc., but eventually -- if it keeps making
sense -- more capitalists adopt it and set to remove the conditions that
restrain its realization.  Making sense in individual capitalist minds and
in their aggregate or collective consciousness is a matter of crass
cost-benefit analysis.
At the end of the day, it'll be the concrete, contingent political battle
which will decide what course the U.S. capitalists will end up choosing and,
as a result of the clash of their choice against those of others, something
will happen (always constrained by the laws of nature and inherited
history).  What Marx's method does is give us a way to sort this messy
process out -- roughly.  Because some broad tendencies are implied as
Hegelian "necessities" by the "logic" of the present conditions.
Julio

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Reply to Charles Brown

Charles Brown wrote on a retired thread:

CB: Fossil fuels are such a strategic resource in the world's technological
regime, that even if their depletion will occur in 2115, humanity might
start to modify radically our mode of production now in order to deal with
the loss over one hundred years from now.
Yes, ultimately, we need to radically modify the mode of production.  No
disagreement here.  The question is how.  I claim that we need to advance
tactically, which is read as "reformist" by the "radicals."  The plan cannot
rely on the expectation of an imminent revolutionary explosion in the U.S.,
particularly if environmental threats are of such urgency.  There are people
who claim both that an environmental disaster is near, yet they reject any
tactical alliance with the DP to evict Bush, who stopped the use of U.S.
money to fund abortions or buy condoms abroad, pulled the U.S. out of the
Kyoto Agreement, ignored the science of global warming, removed pesky
environmental regulations to favor his campaign donors, pushed the drilling
of Alaska, etc. -- not to mention the environmental disaster that the
ongoing killing and crippling of Iraqis and non-Iraqis in Iraq represents
(given that we humans are a humble part of the environment as well).
The gravity of the potential harm is so great that with the uncertainty of
the resource total we should err on the side of caution, assume the worst
case scenario or contingency, and prepare for that worst case.  Worst case
scenario preparation is a fundamentally prudent approach in general in
dealing with real world, serious problems. This issue is a million times
more serious than a stock market bubble.
Seriously, how can we be cautious and make a difference when we don't rule
the country and/or refuse to have a meaningful "reformist" influence on
public affairs except via mass demonstrations?  Modifying our lifestyles
individually?  Considering the system of incentives currently in place in,
say, the U.S., I doubt a lot of people will follow unless there's serious
(even if gradual, "reformist") political change.  Or perhaps the higher
price of oil will do?
If our "urgency" about the environment is because we want to use the issue
as a mere slogan against "capitalism" and to invoke the need for a radical
revolution, first, it will be irrelevant because people are not moved to a
revolution by invocations of this kind and, second, it'll show its fakeness
and discredit itself as a cause.
Julio

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Reply to ravi

ravi wrote on another thread:

being opposed to a notion means that you think the notion is incorrect.
that statement has meaning (in discourse) irrespective of how one expresses
one's opposition. of course, i could continue in your style and list the
positions or responses i wish to restrict you to, by starting out with the
question on whether you accept the stated proposition or not. and until
you, and others, answer that question, i could refuse to proceed, with
reason, with further analysis.
Precisely, I was questioning how Louis expressed his opposition to the NJ
suburban lifestyle.  Thinking that a notion is incorrect doesn't clarify its
implications.  And I was trying to clarify its implications because,
politically, they can be very different.
Now, I didn't claim that the options I listed were exhaustive (or even
mutually exclusive) -- although they kind of were.  To the best of my skill,
I'm trying to make an argument that has large political implications.  It's
not a logical trick.  So relax.  Louis and you are welcome to extend the
list of options and show the validity of the option(s) of your choosing.
Now, if you're reacting to the way I communicate with Louis Proyect, let me
tell you that over time people evolve certain patterns of communication.
Sometimes first impressions make a big difference.  That's why the first
times we engage someone, we need to be careful in our tone.  I've debated
with Luis Proyect for many years and, although I've taken some polemical
abuse from him, I try to deal with his ideas fairly and respectfully.
Sometimes I may indulge in a bit of irony, but never personal insult.  I
respect and admire Louis for many reasons.
Julio

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Poconos commuter hell, part 2

NY Times, April 12, 2004
A HOME TOO FAR
Trying to Hang On in the Poconos, From Before Dawn to Way Past Dusk
By ANDREW JACOBS

MOUNT POCONO, Pa. - Dazed with exhaustion, Angela Dean takes a third swipe
at the snooze bar and then realizes she cannot afford another 10-minute
reprieve from reality. It is 3:30 a.m., and there is laundry to be done,
lunches to be made and homework to be checked before she can climb aboard
the 5:15 bus that carries her to her big city job two states away.
She smears toothpaste on her sons' toothbrushes, changes the water in a
fishbowl that has turned brown and then trudges into Trenton's bedroom.
"C'mon ragamuffin child," she says, shaking her whimpering 8-year-old awake
and pushing him toward the bathroom. Eleven-year-old Michael is less
compliant, and only the promise of a lollipop gets him out of bed. Half an
hour later, the boys are bundled into the car and Ms. Dean is driving like
mad to the home of a baby sitter. "Pay attention in class," she calls to
Trenton before heading down the mountain.
With a minute to spare, Ms. Dean boards the bus and nods to the bleary-eyed
club of commuters. As the bus rumbles past the darkened windows of strip
malls and half-finished homes, Ms. Dean unfolds a blanket, tries to apply
makeup and gives in to slumber. By the time it crosses the Pennsylvania-New
Jersey border, the 5:15 has become a rolling dormitory, the whoosh of
hydraulic brakes mingling with an orchestra of snores.
Nearly three hours later, after the usual crush at the Lincoln Tunnel, the
bus emerges into Midtown, and Ms. Dean, 38, a labor investigator for New
York State, fixes her hair and offers a bitter assessment of her life. "I
spend more time with these people than I do with my own family," she says,
stuffing the blanket into her bag.
Ms. Dean is a weary soldier in a growing legion of teachers, subway
conductors and executive secretaries, 17,000 strong, who make the voyage
each day from the forested Pocono highlands to the steel escarpments of
Manhattan. Largely black and Latino, urban refugees from places like
Newark, Brooklyn and Queens, they come here for the schools, the trees and
the $140,000 starter homes, seeking what generations of middle-class
strivers have always sought. With Long Island, Westchester and suburban New
Jersey beyond their means, more than 44,000 arrived in the 1990's.
But this mass westward migration has also had a dark side. Since 1995, more
than one in five households with mortgages in Monroe County, Pa., have
stumbled into foreclosure proceedings, their credit ruined, their family
life in tatters.
Some simply misjudged the financial and physical strain of commuting or the
cost of heating a home through the bitter Pocono winters. Others
overstretched budgets, leaving themselves vulnerable to unforeseen expenses
or an unexpected pink slip. Hundreds more, perhaps thousands, fell victim
to misleading real estate deals that saddled them with overpriced houses
they could neither refinance nor sell.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/12/nyregion/12pocono.html

Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Houses of the People

2004-04-12 Thread Michael Hoover

Working people lack space, the physical kind; its absence is
disempowering because of the ways that such space is a significant
instrument of social power.  Bourdieu, Davis, Foucault, Lefebvre, Soja
(among others) inform us of the ways that space functions to
reproduce/reinforce dominant/repressive social relations.  But space (as
Margaret Kohn, _Radical Space: Building the House of the People_,
reminds) can also play a transformative political role by which the
oppressed challenge and change social relations of power.  Kohn's study
of turn-of-the-20th century Italian worker coops, chambers of labor,
mutual aid societies, and "case del popolo" (houses of the people)
conveys how working people can create/use "their own space" to forge
collective identity and mobilize collective activism/resistance.

Some physical space divides and segregates people, others bring people
together (many of whom would rarely make contact with one another
otherwise).  Kohn points out that the groups she examined were organized
around locality, thus, they facilitated interaction among
skilled/unskilled, industrial/agricultural, employed/unemployed workers.
 For example, neighborhood "circulos" (cooperative bar) allowed for talk
in a "safe space" where working people could share experiences and
perspectives, discover common interests, and develop collective
aims/strategies.

What "houses of the people" exist today?  What "radical spaces"
(democratic places by and for working people, not leftists/socialists
per se) might be created in the present/the future?  How might this
happen? Michael Hoover

Re: US has lost militarily

2004-04-12 Thread Mike Ballard

Stop the Genocide against the People of Falluja City
in Iraq



The American military troops have proven unprecedented
cruelty and barbarism throughout a whole week of
aerial bombing on the residences of Falluja city in
Mid-western Iraq. This followed a terrorist act
administered by some local youth over four American
contracters that ended in killing them and
dismembering their bodies.



The continuous American bombing has killed around 600
Falluja residents with brutality equivalent to that of
the Baath regime and the former dictator Saddam
Husein. The masters of Democracy and Human Rights
have administered one of the bloodiest mass punishment
over the civilians of Falluja City with cruelty
unprecedented in modern history. As a result, the torn
and shredded dead bodies of children and women filled
the streets of the city. A sight to which the eyes of
Paul Bremer and his generals, the professional
mass-killers, did not even blink.



Moreover, the Arab Nationalists and figures of
Political Islam in Falluja city have proven to be
leaders of  the most inhuman terrorism in Iraq, with
indifference to human lives, even if those belonged to
their families, their women or children. One week ago,
Falluja city was doomed with a criminal mob that found
it quite easy to kill and burn bodies. After dragging
dead bodies and dismembering them, they celebrated
hanging them with brutality that will smear the humane
conscience of millions of Iraqis for decades to come.
In these days, these fanatics of Arab Nationalism and
Islamism have managed by their determination to fight
the American enemy to turn their homes into
graveyards. In their neighbouhoods, they agitate
battles with their long-waited American enemy, even if
these happens at the expense of the lives of hundreds
of their women and children.



>From all freedom lovers, people in Iraq need a stance
of solidarity against one of the bloodiest genocides
that was fully expected from the masters of Hiroshima
and Nagazaki. Stand up against both poles of terrorism
that have decided the verdict of death and destruction
over the civilians of Falluja city.



Down with the two poles of terrorism and their wars
against innocent civilians.

Lets all work to drive both poles of terrorism out of
Iraq.

There will be no salvation for the agonized humanity
and no guaranty to civilians right to life with the
existence of the professionals of genocide and
terrorism.



Yanar Mohammed

Organisation Of Womens Freedom in Iraq OWFI

April 11, 2004

http://www.wpiraq.org/english/




=
"Objectivity cannot be equated
with mental blankness; rather,
objectivity resides in recognizing
your preferences and then subjecting
them to especially harsh scrutiny 
and also in a willingness to revise
or abandon your theories when
 the tests fail (as they usually do)."
 Stephen Jay Gould

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

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Mass Antiwar Protests in Japan, Fate of Iraq Hostages Remains Unclear

2004-04-12 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi

*   Monday, April 12th, 2004
Mass Antiwar Protests in Japan, Fate of Iraq Hostages Remains Unclear
Listen to: Segment

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Japan to lend support to
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for keeping troops in Iraq despite
threats to execute three Japanese hostages. We go to Tokyo to speak
with the international coordinator of Peace Boat, a Japan-based NGO
focusing on peace education and advocacy. [Includes rush transcript]
As Vice President Dick Cheney visits Japan, thousands take to the
streets in Tokyo to protest the country's participation in the Iraq
occupation.
Vice President Dick Cheney was in Japan today where he told Japanese
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that he was doing the right thing by
resisting mounting political pressure and keeping Japanese troops in
Iraq despite shock over the kidnapping of three Japanese civilians.
In Japan, the news of the hostages has been the country's top story
for much of the past week. Being held are an 18-year-old who had
traveled to Iraq to study the effects of depleted uranium, a
32-year-old freelance journalist and a 34-year-old aid worker. On
Saturday, Al Jazeera recevied a faxed statement that said the three
hostages would be released within 24 hours but they are still being
held leading to increased calls for Japan to pull its troops from
Iraq. There have been large demonstrations in Japan, protesting the
country's participation in the Iraq occupation.
* Ryo Ijichi, international coordinator of Peace Boat, a Japan based
NGO focusing on peace education and advocacy. It was started by
Japanese university students some 20 years ago. . . .
   **
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity:

Re: capitalism's laws of motion

2004-04-12 Thread michael perelman

Flanagan, Martin. 1998. "Global Car Mergers Will Put Best Six in Top Gear." The 
Scotsman (3 November): p. 25.
 Alex Trotman, the chairman and chief executive of Ford Motor Company, said a "global 
dogfight" under way in the car industry lead to only six global automotive giants in 
the next century in an address before the Confederation of British Industry in 
Birmingham on 3 November 1998.  He said, "One recent study predicted that the 40 or so 
auto companies in existence today will shrink to about 20 in the next century. My 
personal prediction: we'll get down to six.  Two with corporate headquarters in the 
United States, two in Europe, two in Japan."
 Mr Trotman said: "The world auto industry has overcapacity of about 40 per cent 
today.  In 1997, the total industry sold about 50 million new vehicles around the 
world.  There was capacity to build at least 19 million additional vehicles," he said.
 "Today's excess capacity is the equivalent of 80 modern, high-volume assembly plants 
sitting idle."  Mr Trotman said it was expected this excess capacity would rise to 22 
million vehicles a year by 2002.  "Yet new players continue to enter the market," he 
added. "In this environment, the trend will be consolidation.
 There were 30,000 automotive suppliers worldwide ten years ago, Mr Trotman said. 
"That number will shrink to 8,000 by the end of the year.  And there's more to come."
 The latest consolidation, however, differed from "the corporate raids of the 
Eighties," he said.  "They are strategically driven partnerships between successful 
companies.  They're intended to increase economy of scale and worldwide market 
coverage and to blend complementary skills -- all in search of long-term survival."
Brauchli, Marcus W. 1998. "More Manufacturers Face Race to Survive As Cup Runs Over in 
the Industrial World." Wall Street Journal (30 November): p. A 17.
 "From cashmere to blue jeans, silver jewelry to aluminum cans, the world is in 
oversupply.  True, some big industries, such as steel, autos and semiconductors, have 
been grappling with excess for years.  But a remarkable range of others have been 
losing their leanness only lately, as crisis-battered nations ramp up manufacturing to 
try to earn more money, and as consumers in many lands, spooked by financial-markets 
gyrations, slow their spending and conserve savings."
 "In business-minded Europe, there are too many tank and armored-personnel-carrier 
plants, relics of the Cold War.  In reformist China, textile factories spin out so 
many excess garments, the country could practically clothe its entire population out 
of inventory.  Thailand has an embarrassment of idle golf courses, Hawaiian beaches 
are lined by underused hotel rooms and South African mines grind out more gold and 
diamonds than the bejeweled classes want (at current prices, anyway).  There's even a 
surfeit of coffee shops -- not just in high-caff towns such as Seattle, but in tea 
towns like Seoul."
 "there are essentially two solutions to extreme excess that afflicts the world 
economy: either industrial downsizing, consolidation and layoffs; or faster growth, 
more consumer spending and improved industrial efficiency."
 Buyan Holding Co., the biggest cashmere producer in distant, landlocked Mongolia, 
hopes that adage doesn't hold. Facing a slump in the price of its main product, 
cashmere, Buyan's president, Jargalsaikhan, is building a $30 million factory that 
will increase output tenfold.  His logic: raise his quality and lower prices, so he 
can outlast rivals in neighboring China.  "They produce sweaters, but only a few 
types," says Mr. Jargalsaikhan, who uses only one name."
 "Decisions such as his escalate what might seem healthy competition into excess, in 
two virulent forms. Manufacturers and service companies not only build too much 
capacity, in which an industry has invested in the capability to produce goods or 
deliver services at a higher level than the market needs, but also create oversupply, 
in which industry is making or delivering more than the market needs."
 "Surplus goods tend to fall in price, which makes it less profitable to produce them. 
 Producers try producing more to lower the cost-of-production-per-item price.  
Unbought goods clog the system.  Prices shrink and, at some point, some producers are 
forced out of the business and supply diminishes.  The economy slows.  Demand shrinks. 
 Equilibrium returns."
 "Companies should go bankrupt, companies should get taken over and inefficiencies 
should be taken out," [citing Christopher Clarke, managing director for Southeast Asia 
at consultancy A.T. Kearney.] "What former Chrysler Corp. Chairman Robert Eaton, 
justifying the virtues of Chrysler's recent merger with DaimlerBenz AG, estimated was 
excess capacity equal to 18 million cars world-wide -- more than annual U.S. demand of 
15 million cars and light trucks."
 "There is too much of many things that not so long ago were scarce. The most

rank-and-file autonomists react to Hardt-Negri's latest musings

Excerpts from replies to the Hardt-Negri call for a benign Empire ("Why 
We Need a Multilateral Magna Carta") on the info exchange, a website 
geared to autonomists and other "libertarian" communists.

"How peculiar. Or maybe not. It seems to coincide with another (can't 
recall the title) article by Hardt about the progressive aspects of euro
hegemony, or somesuch."
---
"Excellent Clintonian analysis by these two. This suggests that Negri 
will soon run for office and surely Hardt must have John Kerry's ear. 
I've heard much the same stuff from Gordon Brown and isn't the critique 
of bush's 'unilateralism' which comes out in every parliament the world 
over effectively this, that the most efficient way to manage the 
multitudes is through a platform of international negotiation with a 
place at the table for 'civil society'. these guys are not just speaking 
to power, they are speaking as power."
---
"This article is incredible. It is not bizarre; it is completely 
confused. Even after John Holloway’s critique that their book EMPIRE is 
conservative in that it tries to theorize the stability of the system, 
Hardt and Negri are STILL looking for the stability of the system 
instead of its overthrow."
---
"Well it appears that this was actually published in the 2004 edition of 
the World Economic Forum's official publication, 'Global Agenda' 
http://www.globalagendamagazine.com/2004/antonione gri.asp so apparently 
they are not bluffing - Hardt and Negri really *are* advisors to the 
emerging Empire they theorized in their 2000 book! What seems a little 
strange however is how their tone flies in the face of their theories 
that it is labor that creates the conditions within which capital is 
forced to react, rather than the opposite as traditional Marxists have 
held - if that were the case why would they need to be *begging* the 
'aristocracy' to take this course of action? Wouldn't they already be 
acting in accordance with such desires as are expressed here if it were 
correct?"

full: 


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Re: capitalism's laws of motion

2004-04-12 Thread Anthony D'Costa

On the question of contradictions; I am looking for some good
recent literature on excess capacity, which I interpret as one
kind of capitalist contadiction from a systemic point of view.  Perhaps
some of you may have written on the dialectical relationship between
competition and monopoly.  While intuitively I know such a relationship
exists, I would like to look at some scholarly stuff.  Relatedly, excess
capacity results from overinvestment in a particular sector (herdlike
behavior) but what about excess capacity arising from demand-constraints
(say inequality)?  And where does underconsumption fit in?  I am working
with Indian data, specifically with the consumer durables industry (auto
for example).

Further, capitalist market expansion is also inclusionary in terms of
consumption, i.e. there are new effective participants in markets say
in low value consumer durable items such as white goods.  Relative price
declines is one factor for this inclusion, increasing employment is
another.  What is the theoretical basis, marxian and otherwise, for such
inclusion and exclusion (inequality above)?

To what extent is the environmental contradictions due to capitalism
or simply due to industrialization?

Lastly, I am aware that many of these relationships are best argued at 
the level of national economies but I am interested in applying these
at the sectoral levels.  What are the methodological problems in
scaling down in this manner?

Thanks much for any inputs.  Off list responses would be good to
avoid unnecessary clutter unless a wider discussion might be
forthcoming.

Cheers, Anthony

xxx
Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor
Comparative International Development
University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436
1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA

Phone: (253) 692-4462
Fax :  (253) 692-5718
xxx

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Devine, James wrote:

> was: RE: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Was Right
> 
> In the midst of a well-thought-out essay, Julio Huato writes: 
> > Appropriating someone else's resources by force can only backfire
> on the essential logic of capitalist production and accumulation.  And it is
> in this essential logic -- rather than in imperialist parasitism -- where it
> lies the remarkable ability of capitalist economies to return more wealth to
> the wealthy.<
> 
> Capitalism always involves a contradiction between capital's interest (the long-term 
> interest of the capitalist class as a whole) and those of competing individual 
> capitalists. (One might liken this contradiction to the "public goods problem" of 
> orthodox economics, though of course there's another contradiction that's more 
> important, that between classes. So it's a "collective goods problem" for the 
> capitalists.) The "accumulate accumulate" drive of capitalism may fit with the 
> interests of capital, but are expressed in the competition of many capitals, each 
> struggling to survive by expanding, by seeking new profit opportunities, grabbing 
> old ones from other capitalists, etc. 
> 
> No-one really knows what capital's interest is exactly -- until after the fact. The 
> Clintonoids seemed to be trying to pursue this goal, but intelligent capitalists (or 
> rather their hired thinkers) could disagree. The proposed collective interest often 
> goes against the interests of powerful capitalist blocs. (Consider the idea of a 
> steep tax on gasoline to encourage conservation. It helps capital -- and has been 
> instituted in W. Europe -- but hurts (or threatens to hurt) many particular 
> sectors.) So, in practice what dominates capitalist political practice is the welter 
> of different particularistic capitalist interests competing in the markets, the 
> legislatures, the courts, and the executive branches (mediated by the various 
> consitution-mandated structures). Shifting coalitions of different blocs -- 
> sometimes allied with non-economic interest groups, non-capitalist interest groups, 
> etc. -- determine the concrete expression of politics.  
> 
> To some extent, protecting existing property rights of capitalists is shared among 
> all of the power-blocs, so that even particularistic "special interest" competition 
> avoids undermining those rights. However, there are key exceptions, where even 
> capitalist property rights are violated. Exceptions include
> 
> (1) cases of nationalistic competition (e.g., WW1, WW2). Nationalism -- involving a 
> cross-class coalition -- evolved in a way that stabilizes the state and the social 
> situation, so that capitalists latched onto nationalism as not only good for them as 
> individuals but as good for them as a class within the given nation. But nationalism 
> typically involves competition with other nations (and oppression or even genocide 
> of national minorities). This gets the cappos beyond

Stan Goff commentary

From www.freedomroad.org:

MILITARY MATTERS
THE BRIDGE – a rant
By Stan Goff
WARNING:  This commentary may cause anxiety.

The United States government has initiated a chain reaction that it can 
no longer control.  The stalled vengeance assault on Fallujah is merely 
a symptom.  So is the uprising triggered by the US closure of a Shia 
newspaper in Sadr City, Baghdad, followed by gunning down the 
demonstrators who protested (Ah, yes, we don’t even hear about that when 
they talk about the latest demon, Muqtada al-Sadr… Memory is so short.).

The chain reaction is far broader and deeper than the battlefield fiasco 
in Iraq right now.  Once brown people start to pick up guns, other brown 
people follow suit.  The myth of invincibility of the United States 
military – called into question even before the Bush Doctrine arrived at 
this particular Iraqi cul-de-sac – is shattered.  No one is shocked.  No 
one is awed.

Nothing left now but plain grimy brutality.  Apache helicopters are 
buzz-sawing through neighborhoods with chain guns and rockets.  Bombs 
are being released onto mosques.  The hospitals and morgues are 
receiving a rich harvest.

I remember a sign at the entrance of Camp Mackall in North Carolina, 
where I began Special Forces training.  “Rule #1:  There are no rules. 
Rule #2:  Obey the first rule.”

The post 9/11 renewal of ground wars in Southwest Asia swept me up into 
a new role.  A career soldier who is a leftist; a leftist who is a 
retired soldier.   I became a trump card that antiwar activists could 
play against the patriot-baiting of the right, so I’ve been trotted out 
in front of one audience after another, from town halls to CNN, as a 
spokesperson against the Bush Doctrine’s militarism.

But people transform their roles.  They deviate from the scripts.

I’m a leftist who carried a gun, in a culture where what passes for the 
left is terrified of guns.  So people pay attention to me.  In audience 
after audience, I have noted that people pay attention to me.  They are 
engaged before I even speak, because they know that I can kill, and that 
gives me an immediacy… not because I am different than them, but because 
I am so very much the same.  I laugh at good jokes.  I rock babies.  I 
take an interest in the weather.

This is more than morbid fascination.

We are a culture insulated from our own basis.  It is a condition of 
metropolitan modernity, more so even of post-modernity.  In a consumer 
society, where general-purpose money has eaten away every bond of 
community, where alienation – and even narcissism – is defined as 
normalcy, where nature is seen as something apart from and below us, the 
very personhood of each of us is deracinated and left to drift through 
the retail landscape like a grieving banshee.  Planned obsolescence 
applies even to our identities.

We really have no idea who pays for this privilege of superficiality, 
but those billions who are doing the paying – far out of our reified 
view – are getting a clearer idea all the time.

full: http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_22_bridge.html

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Profit making under capitalism

2004-04-12 Thread Devine, James

Ken writes: >I recall somewhere in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts that Marx
claimed that equality of wealth under capitalism although not possible would
not change the essential nature of the system even if it could occur. <

if I remember correctly, the EPM is part of Marx's anti-commercial, anti-market, 
phase. (So that there can be a "capitalism" with egalitarian distribution, otherwise 
known as simple commodity production.) Later, he shifted to anti-capitalism, with 
anti-commercialism being part of that. Even so, CAPITAL wasn't a critique of markets 
as much as one of capitalism.

> In
fact Marxian socialism is not about equal distribution of wealth or removing
wealth asymmetry. It is for abolishing the capitalist system of production
and for a system where the means of production are socially owned and
production is based upon need not profit and democratically planned and run.
<

right. 

Jim Devine

Re: Mark Jones Was Right

2004-04-12 Thread Michael Perelman

Let's retire this tiresome thread.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: Mark Jones Was Right

2004-04-12 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

Very expensive colonial ventures often focused on a few
commodities. E.g., sugar in the Caribbean islands.  Did capitalists
in other sectors object to colonizing the Caribbean islands for
sugar plantations because most of them did not directly benefit
from them?
To take a minor recent example, nobody but Dole and Chiquita
benefited from his banana war, but Clinton waged it with gusto.
The "banana war" didn't throw the whole world into political crisis.
Neither did the colonization of the Caribbean a few centuries ago.
Increasing the supply and depressing the price of sugar helped other
sectors; raising the price of oil harms them. These are completely
inappropriate analogies.
Doug
The logic of protectionism on one hand and that of certain sorts of
colonialism and imperialism on the other hand are basically the same,
though impacts of each instance differ from one another.  That is
presumably why libertarians object to both.
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity:

FW: At a Loss

2004-04-12 Thread Funke Jayson J

Title: FW: At a Loss




Thanks to everyone for the interesting responses. 


Carrol wrote: “There are, what, 300 million people in the U.S. There must be 10s of millions who could be reached by left agitation if we found a way to attract their attention. So why are you wasting your time trying to argue with someone who simply is not one of those 10s of millions?



I guess for the same reason we debate anything on this list. I learn a great deal from both those that sympathize with my views as well as those who may hold opposite ones.

Jayson



 
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Re: At a Loss

2004-04-12 Thread Carrol Cox

> Funke Jayson J wrote:
> 
> I have been having what is probably a pointless and circular debate with a friend 
> that has left me hanging for an appropriate response. I dont know how to answer 
> someone who defends capitalism BECAUSE it is a brutal system, and that they are fine 
> with that system. I dont know where to go.

There are, what, 300 million people in the U.S. There must be 10s of
millions who could be reached by left agitation if we found a way to
attract their attention. So why are you wasting your time trying to
argue with someone who simply is not one of those 10s of millions?

If he's your friend, talk about something else than politics with him.

Carrol

capitalism's laws of motion

2004-04-12 Thread Devine, James

was: RE: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Was Right

In the midst of a well-thought-out essay, Julio Huato writes: 
> Appropriating someone else's resources by force can only backfire
on the essential logic of capitalist production and accumulation.  And it is
in this essential logic -- rather than in imperialist parasitism -- where it
lies the remarkable ability of capitalist economies to return more wealth to
the wealthy.<

Capitalism always involves a contradiction between capital's interest (the long-term 
interest of the capitalist class as a whole) and those of competing individual 
capitalists. (One might liken this contradiction to the "public goods problem" of 
orthodox economics, though of course there's another contradiction that's more 
important, that between classes. So it's a "collective goods problem" for the 
capitalists.) The "accumulate accumulate" drive of capitalism may fit with the 
interests of capital, but are expressed in the competition of many capitals, each 
struggling to survive by expanding, by seeking new profit opportunities, grabbing old 
ones from other capitalists, etc. 

No-one really knows what capital's interest is exactly -- until after the fact. The 
Clintonoids seemed to be trying to pursue this goal, but intelligent capitalists (or 
rather their hired thinkers) could disagree. The proposed collective interest often 
goes against the interests of powerful capitalist blocs. (Consider the idea of a steep 
tax on gasoline to encourage conservation. It helps capital -- and has been instituted 
in W. Europe -- but hurts (or threatens to hurt) many particular sectors.) So, in 
practice what dominates capitalist political practice is the welter of different 
particularistic capitalist interests competing in the markets, the legislatures, the 
courts, and the executive branches (mediated by the various consitution-mandated 
structures). Shifting coalitions of different blocs -- sometimes allied with 
non-economic interest groups, non-capitalist interest groups, etc. -- determine the 
concrete expression of politics.  

To some extent, protecting existing property rights of capitalists is shared among all 
of the power-blocs, so that even particularistic "special interest" competition avoids 
undermining those rights. However, there are key exceptions, where even capitalist 
property rights are violated. Exceptions include

(1) cases of nationalistic competition (e.g., WW1, WW2). Nationalism -- involving a 
cross-class coalition -- evolved in a way that stabilizes the state and the social 
situation, so that capitalists latched onto nationalism as not only good for them as 
individuals but as good for them as a class within the given nation. But nationalism 
typically involves competition with other nations (and oppression or even genocide of 
national minorities). This gets the cappos beyond the "rules of the game" of "normal" 
competition and "normal" capitalism.

(2) in the case of the international spread of capitalism (of whatever sort, the 
"classical" imperialism described by Lenin, Bukharin, Luxemburg, etc., the 
US-hegemonic capitalism of the post-WW2 era, etc.) Various populations of the world 
don't have the power to resist those blocs of capital who see international expansion 
as beneficial to themselves. Even the big capitalists -- to the extent they exist -- 
of the invaded countries seem to be mere "petty bourgeois" to the imperialists. And 
the p.b. is one of the groups run over the capitalist steamroller, along with peasants 
and workers. Others decide "if you can't fight 'em, join 'em" and become local tools 
of the imperium.

Capitalism is expanding and becoming "purer" _via_ primitive accumulation, which 
brings new areas and populations under its sway. There's a new version of this, i.e., 
the war against the old "model" of capitalism, nation-centered development. During 
most of the 20th century, the nation-state was the basis of capitalist development. As 
noted, nationalism stabilized the system. In many cases, it also promoted national 
prosperity. There are all sorts of versions of this, ranging from Naziism to fascism 
to FDR's New Deal to social democracy. But in the rich countries, the national model 
of development is _passé_ (partly because of the fall of the USSR, partly because of 
the decline of labor movements and immobile capitalist forces). The capitalist classes 
of the rich countries are slowly merging. The neo-liberal policy revolution of the 
last 25 years or so expresses this merger. We also see a confluence of this new 
expression of "what's good for the capitalist class" with particularistic interests of 
capitalists: some powerful blocs can profit from privatization, etc., imposed on 
subordinate countries (and also from privatization in the rich countries themselves). 
By abolishing the "third world" versions of the nation-centered development model 
("Arab socialism," "the non-capitalist road to development," etc.) particularistic 
interests

American hostage was impoverished farmer

Town Awaits Word on Man Kidnapped in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 12, 2004

MACON, Miss. (AP) -- In his hometown in eastern Mississippi, Thomas
Hamill is known as a good guy -- a family man with two children who took
a job driving trucks in Iraq to make ends meet after his dairy farm took
a hit.
On Sunday night, several hundred friends and neighbors gathered for a
vigil outside the county courthouse to pray for the safe return of the
civilian who was taken hostage in Iraq. Many wore yellow ribbons and
scrawled notes of support for his family.
``This is a small town. It hits us hard. God bless him, he's just trying
to make a living for his family,'' said longtime resident Marion Gilbertson.
Hamill, 43, was snatched Friday by gunmen who attacked a fuel convoy he
was guarding, one of a string of kidnappings in Iraq.
His captors had threatened to kill him unless U.S. troops ended their
assault on the city of Fallujah. A deadline imposed by his abductors
came and went Sunday morning with no word of his fate.
``I'm just praying,'' said his grandmother, Vera Hamill.

Hamill works for the Houston-based engineering and construction company
Kellogg, Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton, his wife, Kellie, told
The Associated Press.
``We're just all pulling together for this man,'' said Mayor Dorothy
Baker Hines, who attended the vigil. The Hamills have a son, around 13,
and a daughter, around 11, Hines said.
The show of support was a great help to Kellie Hamill, a 911 operator in
Macon, the mayor said.
``Her spirits were lifted from what she heard about the prayer vigil,''
Hines said Monday. ``I told her if there was anything she needed to let
the community know. She told me we just need to pray for her and that's
what we're doing.''
James Jones, who went to high school with Hamill, said financial reasons
prompted his friend to go to Iraq. He returned briefly a few weeks ago
when his wife had open-heart surgery.
A Halliburton official left Hamill's house Sunday evening without
commenting.
In a videotape of Hamill, broadcast Saturday on the Arab TV station
Al-Jazeera, his expression was calm but wary. A voice-over read by an
Al-Jazeera announcer quoted Hamill as saying he was being treated well.
``I am in good shape,'' the voice-over quoted him as saying. ``I hope to
return home one day, and I want my family to know that these people are
taking care of me, and provide me with food, water and a place to sleep.''
Hamill was in Lamar White's country store two weeks ago when he was home
on emergency for his wife's surgery. At the time, they talked about
Hamill's experiences in Iraq.
``He said it wasn't bad over there once you got used to it,'' White
said. ``He said it just takes a while to get adjusted but when you do
it's all right.''


--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Profit making under capitalism

2004-04-12 Thread k hanly

Julio Huato said

Marx's hypothesis is that profit making under capitalism is essentially the
appropriation of someone else's unpaid labor by means of a kosher, voluntary
market transaction.

Comment: Marx's hypothesis is surely not that it is a voluntary market
transaction but a forced transaction because the capitalists own the means
of production and the workers do not and have no means of access except
through wage slavery. They cannot themselves produce and support
themselves.Workers are forced into the transaction to keep themselves alive.
The theory that it is a voluntary transaction is part of the capitalist
ideology.

It is not assymmetry of wealth that makes the voluntary part a sham it is
that the workers havent access to the means of production themselves. Of
course if there were a more equitable distribution of wealth some potential
workers might opt out but if too many do or if the cost of labor becomes too
great capital will flow to lower cost  areas ceteris paribus and/or
technological innovation will be encouraged to lower hours of labor input in
production. Assymetry of wealth is certainly a factor that explains why
workers choose to become employed but it is not the basic mechanism of the
system which is the division of people into owners of the means of
production and those who must sell their labor power.
  It is not the market that explains the form of abusing it is the mode of
production. The mode of production involves the capitalist class owning the
means of production and producing for profit not on the basis of
need--except of course need backed by consumers willing to part with bucks.
It is because of the ownership of the means of production that the
capitalist can appropriate surplus value. It is a function of ownership not
of the market.
In fact later you yourself admit this sort of...

" Profit making and accumulation
entail a functional market setting, which in turn entails private ownership
and its enforcement. "
   But markets require only private ownership of goods to be traded.
Capitalism requires private ownership of the menas of production. And
functional capitalist markets do not require voluntary trades and
competition. Halliburton can save itself from bankruptcy through crony
contacts and no competitive bidding in Iraq.
  I recall somewhere in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts that Marx
claimed that equality of wealth under capitalism although not possible would
not change the essential nature of the system even if it could occur. In
fact Marxian socialism is not about equal distribution of wealth or removing
wealth asymmetry. It is for abolishing the capitalist system of production
and for a system where the means of production are socially owned and
production is based upon need not profit and democratically planned and run.


Cheers, Ken Hanly

Mark Jones Was Right

From: Julio Huato

-clip-

 If you mean (2), then you disagree

with Marx, David, Melvin, and me. That's okay... except that (IMO) we're

right and you're wrong. If it is (3), *that* is exactly what David Schanoes

-- obviously based on Karl Marx -- is implying. Then (although I find your

way of posing the question very vague and inadequate) you agree with Marx,

David, Melvin, and me. Glad we all agree.



CB: I was talking with Marx the other day, and he agrees with Lou more than
you.

Oh, and Marx Jones says hello , too.

Recall: At a Loss

2004-04-12 Thread Funke Jayson J

Title: Recall: At a Loss




Funke Jayson J would like to recall the message, "At a Loss".



 
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White Man's Burden in Iraq

Hearts, Minds, And The Military in Iraq
by Gilles d'Aymery
Swans, April 12, 2004

"The time has come for a new approach in Iraq. [...]

[O]ne year after the fall of Baghdad, the United States should not be 
casting about for a formula to bring additional U.S. troops to Iraq. We 
should instead be working toward an exit strategy. [...]

[F]rom the flood of disturbing dispatches from Iraq, it is clear that 
many Iraqis, both Sunni and Shiite, are seething under the yoke of the 
American occupation. [...]

It is staggeringly clear that the Administration did not understand the 
consequences of invading Iraq a year ago, and it is staggeringly clear 
that the Administration has no effective plan to cope with the aftermath 
of the war and the functional collapse of Iraq. It is time - past time - 
for the President to remedy that omission and to level with the American 
people about the magnitude of mistakes made and lessons learned. America 
needs a roadmap out of Iraq, one that is orderly and astute, else more 
of our men and women in uniform will follow the fate of Tennyson's 
doomed Light Brigade."
—US Senator Robert C. Byrd (GA. D.); Remarks to the floor of the Senate, 
April 8, 2004.

Once more, the powerful remarks of Sen. Byrd will resonate with those 
who opposed the War in Iraq in the first place, and have, ever since 
this gruesome disaster began over one year ago, principally and 
courageously ("It has been suggested that any who dare to question the 
President are no better than the terrorists themselves," says Sen. 
Byrd.) advocated to bring the troops home. Once more, the thousands who 
demonstrated in the streets of New York City, Los Angeles, San 
Francisco, etc. this past weekend, and the millions all over the world 
who pray that reason may prevail, will hope that the powers that be in 
Washington D.C. will heed the words and the wisdom of the good senator. 
Once more, they will be disappointed -- but hopefully not disillusioned 
further into the darkness of cynicism -- for the voice of this 
octogenarian will eventually carry the day.

Their hope may be momentarily (years, decades?) thwarted, for power is 
blinded by careerism and self-interest, reason has been trashed along 
the same corridors, and a pathological cultural gene -- some call it a 
meme -- has deluded the white "liberal" elite and its whored lackeys and 
other palatial guard dogs -- the punditocracy -- to herald, for as long 
as one can remember, that we, the good fornicating Christian capitalist 
consumers, were the holder of the truth, the sole possessor of 
knowledge, and the definer of progress.

So, "[F]irst, we are going to win," says Gen. John Abizaid, the head of 
the Army's Central Command in Iraq. "Secondly," he adds, "everyone needs 
to understand that there is no more powerful force assembled on earth 
than this military force in this country backed up with our naval and 
air forces in near proximity." To be pin-pointedly clear, he follows 
with "those who oppose moving democracy forward will have to pay the 
consequences if they don't cease and desist." We will "pacify" the 
country, the American military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, 
assures us. We have overwhelming forces. The bad guys, the Saddam 
remnants, the Sunni diehards, the al Qaeda extremists, the foreign 
suicide bombers, the Shia thugs, the Mahdist fanatics, the insurgents, 
the rebels -- they all are terrorists now according to Bill Safire (1) 
-- will be defeated. If necessary, more troops will be sent to advance 
progress in this far-away land. We are the force of good against evil. 
We will carry the day. It's called Freedom and Democracy -- the latest 
example of our mission civilisatrice.

"My battalion carries out dozens of missions all over the city -- 
missions that are improving peoples' lives. We have restored schools and 
universities, hospitals, power plants and water systems. We have 
engineered new infrastructure projects and much more. We have also 
brought security and order to many of Baghdad's worst areas -- areas 
once afflicted with chaos and brutality. Our efforts to train vast 
numbers of Iraqis to police and secure the city's basic law and order 
are bearing fruit.

"Our mission is vital. We are transforming a once very sick society into 
a hopeful place. Dozens of newspapers and the concepts of freedom of 
religious worship and expression are flowering here. So, too, are 
educational improvements."

--Joe Roche, U.S. Army's 16th Combat Engineer Battalion in Iraq, and 
adjunct fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, a 
Washington think-tank. (2)

Let's give the benefit of the doubt to Mr. Roche and take for granted 
that he actually wrote those words -- instead of disseminating the 
disinformation concocted in one of the many PR departments at the 
Pentagon -- and that he believes them.

Then, forget the fact that had we not deliberately destroyed Iraq's 
infrastructure through Gulf War I, a decade of dec

Re: Mark Jones Was Right/last response on this particular theme

2004-04-12 Thread Waistline2

In a message dated 4/11/2004 7:22:43 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
No, what I said , or at least what I meant to say, was that this beliefthat all the problems are caused by property relations and that thereare not real (ecological) constraints on population growth and resource utilization has become a barrier to communicating with workers and the general population. I have done a lot of worker education with unions and with labour studies programs most of my working life . . . and the quickest way I found to alienate the workers you were working with was to tell them that they are the problem with their overconsumption and demands for a higher standard of living. . . . But if I told them that the only solution was revolution or even radical change in the system, they would laugh me out of the room and not invite me back. . . What I was objecting to is the modern day 'impossibilists' and their denial of ecological constraints on population and resource utilization and their 'blame the victim' of modern day workers for overconsumption.
Reply
Trade Union work is difficult and complex, especially if it becomes a lifetime pursuit. As an elected rep. in the autoworkers union, my monthly reports as Chairman of the Shop Committee and twice monthly letters to the Machining Division did not discuss theoretical questions. The only exception was a discussion concerning the internal combustion engine. I stated that the internal combustion engine had no future and its demise would benefit the people of the world and this caused enormous problems because I was the highest elected union representative in a plant that produced an internal combustion engine - Chrysler's 318 engine, which I have in my conversion van.
I was charged with being against my own job and being against the very people who elected me. I proved my merit as a union leader and communist and explained that I am in favor of the earth and income and the internal combusion engine was not "the only game in town." I presented the issue as a person working in a nuclear bomb factory and asked who is against dropping nuclear bombs on people? And should these factories be closed down and people employed in other sectors of the economy.
The discussions on Pen-L and Marxmail are multileveled. It was my advocacy of fuel cell technology that earned me the tag "techno-communist," although that discussion was multileveled and spoke to the law of entropy and environmental pollution. As a Trade Union leader, I did in fact sell many copies of the Communist Manifesto and communist literature during my 30 year tenure and my greatest error was not selling enough of this kind of literature.

Individual disagreements are part of life. I have questioned the concept of the "carrying capacity of the earth" as population growth and asked that the proponents of this theory of overpopulation describe their meaning. The pressure on earth resources is in fact a property question first and foremost and a question of technology and science as a secondary factor. Would you accept work in another area for the same income?
I finally stated their is no reason we should let a bunch of capitalistic mutherfuckers make us stupid, just because they have us by the short hairs. Everyone smiled and agreed. Fu*k the internal combustion engine and the pollution.
I see no harm in telling the workers the truth. How the truth is told is a question of art. Obesity means over consumption and most workers - especially the women, will listen to anyone that understands what over consumption entails. The solution to over consumption is to stop over consuming, in this case eating everything edible. We are literally consuming - eating the earth, and out of ignorance are not living in harmony with the earths metabolic processes.
The bourgeois property relations as the value producing system reproduces this wrong consumption in an ever widening scope based on the insatiable drive for private profits. The workers will understand this.
It is my contention that the influence of the "left" is considerable more that what we think or what is registered in the bourgeois press. The political "left" for me has a distinct meaning. The "left" - how ever one defines it, grew out of the generation of the 1960s and 1970s and have a profound material impact on the body politics in America. The shift in registered opinions concerning the war in Iraq expresses the politics and sentiment of the previous generation that constituted the "left" during the Vietnam war era and our children.
The political forms of organization of a militant anti-imperialist, anti-invasionists policy in America is elusive, but it is clear that the Bush administration has hit a profound political barrier that is the thinking of millions of people in America.
It is not my personal feeling that the American people talk about issues in the form presented on Pen-L, but this does not in any way dimin

Re: Mark Jones Was Right

2004-04-12 Thread ravi

Julio Huato wrote:
> Louis Proyect:
>
>
>>I am simply opposed to the notion that the Earth can sustain the life-style
>>of a New Jersey suburbanite. Just project 10 billion people with Jeep V8s,
>>central air conditioning, lawns, a TV in every room, beef 5 times a week,
>>etc. Simply can't be accomplished under any social system.
>
>
> What do you mean by "being opposed"?  That
>
> (1) you will choose not to live in NJ and live that lifestyle?
>
> (2) you will liquidate NJ suburbia, destroy SUVs, AC equipment, TV sets,
> computers, devolve the cows to their "natural habitat" (?), etc.?
>
> (3) you'll do your part to make sure the economy is re-organized in such a
> way that the direct producers set the production and consumption priorities
> of society (subject to natural laws, etc.)?
>

being opposed to a notion means that you think the notion is incorrect.
that statement has meaning (in discourse) irrespective of how one
expresses one's opposition. of course, i could continue in your style
and list the positions or responses i wish to restrict you to, by
starting out with the question on whether you accept the stated
proposition or not. and until you, and others, answer that question, i
could refuse to proceed, with reason, with further analysis.

--ravi

[no subject]

Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 09:09:37 -0500

From: dmschanoes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Subject: Re:

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First a little point for point

- Original Message -

From: soula avramidis

To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 6:19 AM

Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Was Right

That oil is a finite resource is not a question; I hope. because if we

were to argue it is not, then that is a doosy per se. so what is the

problem here, that oil will peak in 2006, 2010, or 2015 etc. is

Hubbert's an imprecise forecast method. this is just like saying the

bubble will burst but I do not know when give or take five years.

dms: Or it's like predicting that the stock market is going to fall,

or that it's going to rain. Make the prediction every day and

eventually, maybe, you'll be right, but only half as right as a stopped

clock which is right twice a day, with exactly the same lack of meaning.

The point is not the predictive accuracy for yes, oil is indeed

finite. The point is whether or not the current actions of the

bourgeois order, of capital, are determined by the finite capacity of a

"natural" resource, or by those contradictions inherent to a system

where the means of production are organized as a property form requiring

the aggrandizement of wage labor.

In simpler language-- is the determinant of the current situation

based on the falling rate of profit in the oil industry based on the

growth of constant capital, or is the determinant some quickly

approaching depletion of the "natural" supply?

___

so what next, that production will peak and that bringing in new

capacity to past levels will cost more per unit of output. and that oil

price and control is relevant since oil is a principal commodity in all

production. it is precisely the point at which cheap oil production

evaporates when alternative energy sources are too costly to smooth the

transition from one mode of energy dependency to another in the process

if you like of capital accumulation.

it is not like as if we were going to wake up tomorrow and find that

oil is gone. it is like when it becomes more expensive to draw oil out

of the ground, going for control of high reserves of cheaply mined Arab

oil (1 dollar per barrel) makes for a hell business, both in itself and

insofar as you strangle others with it. that is why Iraq and the gulf

where cost of production is cheap is the big prize for US bourgeoisie

dms: There have been three OPEC price spikes since 1973. None of

them had anything to do with increased costs of production. In fact,

the latest one 1999 was in fact triggered by overproduction, itself a

result of the declining cost of production below the 1949 post WW2 low.

You can look it up.

Further, the historic trend for finding and lifting costs for US

petroleum majors has been downward since 1973, with an upturn around

1996-97 as more US effort went into deepwater drilling. The recent

trend has resumed its downward costs.

You are right. We sure aren't going to wake up and find the oil gone.

And the bourgeoisie and the markets do NOT react to predicted 30 year

scarcities. Capital does not allow that. It's all about fear and greed

for capital, today's fear and greed, today's cash. Markets have no

memory and less imagination. If it were otherwise, there would never be

overproduction, or bubbles, or the repitition of the same old same old

scams.

__

. that is why Mark Jones was not only right.. his little peace on the

castration of Japanese capital was one good piece of Leninist analysis,

but he like I fall into the trap of becoming natural scientist when we

are not.

the point is not about natural science however, it is about the

process during decline.

dms:

Don't know if I read that piece, but yes OPEC 1 in particular sure

smacked the Japanese around, and OPEC 2 had some impact, but moreso in

the 1986 price break, leading to the Plaza Accords, and the gutting of

the USSR>

__

And now for the another, perhaps, bigger issue:

The scarcity argument, and Mark Jones' argument was/is NOT about

cost--the depletionist argument, which Jones embraced, is about an

absolute zero of petroleum/hydrocarbon availability. That supposed

Marxists can endorse this assertion without considering its meaning for

all of Marx's work and critique, including that most important critique,

the necessity of proletarian revolution, is mind-boggling. The

depletionist argument is that the end is near, repenting won't help, and

the future looks a lot like George Miller's Mad Max ser

Re: Mark Jones Was Right

2004-04-12 Thread ravi

i want to thank in public, louis proyect for the spirited, logical and
convincing defense of his position on the [un]sustainability of current
population levels and rates of consumption. i am glad to see that the
ghost of the ehrlich/simon wager has not raised its head for convenient
misuse.

--ravi

Re: Mark Jones Was Right

2004-04-12 Thread Doug Henwood

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

Very expensive colonial ventures often focused on a few commodities.
E.g., sugar in the Caribbean islands.  Did capitalists in other
sectors object to colonizing the Caribbean islands for sugar
plantations because most of them did not directly benefit from them?
To take a minor recent example, nobody but Dole and Chiquita
benefited from his banana war, but Clinton waged it with gusto.
The "banana war" didn't throw the whole world into political crisis.
Neither did the colonization of the Caribbean a few centuries ago.
Increasing the supply and depressing the price of sugar helped other
sectors; raising the price of oil harms them. These are completely
inappropriate analogies.
Doug

Mark Jones Was Right

From: soula avramidis


That oil is a finite resource is not a question; I hope. because if we were
to argue it is not, then that is a doosy per se. so what is the problem
here, that oil will peak in 2006, 2010, or 2015 etc. is Hubbert's an
imprecise forecast method. this is just like saying the bubble will burst
but I do not know when give or take five years.


CB: Fossil fuels are such a strategic resource in the world's technological
regime, that even if their depletion will occur in 2115, humanity might
start to modify radically our mode of production now in order to deal with
the loss over one hundred years from now.

You know, be prepared, the Boy Scout's motto, is actually kind of profound.
The gravity of the potential harm is so great that with the uncertainty of
the resource total we should err on the side of caution, assume the worst
case scenario or contingency, and prepare for that worst case.  Worst case
scenario preparation is a fundamentally prudent approach in general in
dealing with real world, serious problems. This issue is a million times
more serious than a stock market bubble.

Re: Mark Jones Was Right

2004-04-12 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

It doesn't, but imperialism has never benefited all sectors of
capitalists in the imperial metropolis.
One sector is a long way short of "all" sectors.

Doug
Very expensive colonial ventures often focused on a few commodities.
E.g., sugar in the Caribbean islands.  Did capitalists in other
sectors object to colonizing the Caribbean islands for sugar
plantations because most of them did not directly benefit from them?
To take a minor recent example, nobody but Dole and Chiquita
benefited from his banana war, but Clinton waged it with gusto.
--
Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity:

Re: Mark Jones Was Right

2004-04-12 Thread ravi

dmschanoes wrote:
>
> 3.Social solutions?  How about disbanding the US military, currently the
> consumer of 22% of US petroleum supplies? How about revolution, so we
> don't provide a material incentive for burning rain forests to produce
> pasture?  Technological solutions?  How about emissions controls?  How
> about elimination of biomass as a fuel, and the use of natural gas.  How
> about a combination of the emission controls and natural gas (which
> current reserves are at 63 years)? Plus, the revolution. If you are
> skeptical about the feasibility of such solutions, then I'm afraid you
> are going to find yourself, despite your protests, right back in the
> corner of those Malthusian solutions you reject-- i.e. culling the herd,
> and imposing sterilizaton on women, since it's always imposed on women
> by men.
>
> 4. Finally, there is a real problem with what I have referred to as
> short-attention span radicalism, in that it never thinks through the
> consequences of its positions-- so someone can talk about a carrying
> capacity of 2 billion and ignore what that entails for at least 4
> billion others on the planet.  So that some might argue for the notion
> of "closing down Phoenix," without explaining what that means, or how
> that would be accomplished.  It makes little sense to argue for a humane
> sharing society when the program includes closing down a city of several
> hundred thousand and doing exactly what with the population?  Forcibly
> dispersing them towhere?  Retirement villages of the damned?  Are we
> going to ship them, lox, stocks, and cracker barrels to other cities
> which we think are more sustainable?  Sounds a little bit too much to me
> like strategic hamlets, or pseudo Stalinist organized deportation based
> on orders of a central committee.  And when those gray panthers of
> Phoenix, and some indigenous peoples say to the central committee, we
> like it here...it's warm and dry... what will the central committee
> say-- "Up Against the Green Wall, motherfucker.  This is the ecology
> police."?
>

so, any attempt to control population growth is portrayed as a sort of
police state. how exactly is the alternative (of this so-called
revolution that reduces this and disbands that) imposed on the people?
the last section of #3 is an attempt at demonizing the position you
disagree with.

--ravi

If it's war you want, vote Kerry

The Spectator, April 10, 2004

If it’s war you want, vote Kerry

John Laughland shows that the Democratic contender is more hawkish than 
Bush, and may appeal to the neocons this November

As the Bush administration comes under increasing fire for its decision 
to attack Iraq, the Democratic contender, John F. Kerry, is profiting 
from his perceived status as a critic of Bush’s foreign policy. A 
patrician grandee with a pleasing mix of liberal and patriotic views 
might seem to many Americans a welcome relief from the bellicose Texan 
with his faux swagger and his team of men who seem to have 
‘military-industrial complex’ written across their menacing foreheads. 
But if anti-war Americans do elect Kerry for that reason, they will have 
duped themselves. Warmongering will be worse under Kerry than under 
Bush, and real peaceniks should therefore vote for Dubya.

Bush and Kerry agree on almost everything in foreign policy, but where 
they disagree, Kerry is more hawkish. In an indication of the extent of 
the militarisation of American political life, John Kerry launched his 
campaign for the presidency specifically by profiling himself as a 
Vietnam war hero, and by presenting George Bush as a draft-dodger and a 
coward. Kerry’s subsequent statements on foreign policy and homeland 
security have continued to attack Bush as a wet. Kerry said in February, 
‘I do not fault George Bush for doing too much in the war on terror. I 
believe he’s done too little.’

Kerry has committed himself to ‘a stronger, more comprehensive strategy 
for winning the war on terror than the Bush administration has ever 
envisioned’ (my italics throughout). Those Americans who are 
uncomfortable with George Bush’s Patriot Act, and the Department of 
Homeland Security, should blanch at John Kerry’s proposals to enlist the 
National Guard in Homeland Security and to ‘break down the old barriers 
between national intelligence and local law enforcement’. Such barriers 
are precisely what distinguish free societies from dictatorships. Kerry 
seems even more obsessed than Bush with weapons of mass destruction, as 
he is constantly harping on about the danger of WMD being delivered 
through American ports.

Kerry voted for the war on Iraq and continues to support it 
wholeheartedly. He said last December that those who continue to oppose 
the war ‘don’t have the judgment to be president — or the credibility to 
be elected president’. Kerry does not even say that Bush has jeopardised 
US security by attacking Iraq instead of facing down the al-Qa’eda 
threat: he is not Richard Clarke. Instead, Kerry says, ‘No one can doubt 
that we are safer — and Iraq is better — because Saddam Hussein is now 
behind bars.’ On 17 December last year, Kerry lent credence to the loony 
theory that Iraq was the author of the 9/11 attacks, something George 
Bush has done at least twice. Yet in February, Kerry attacked Bush for 
planning to hand back power to the Iraqis too quickly — what he called 
‘a cut and run strategy’ — even though Bush intends the US embassy in 
Iraq to be the biggest American embassy in the world, and even though 
some 110,000 US troops are to remain stationed there indefinitely.

Above all, John Kerry is, like Bush, committed to the world military 
supremacy of the USA. ‘We must never retreat from having the strongest 
military in the world,’ says the possible future president. Kerry claims 
that George Bush has actually ‘weakened’ the military, and so he has 
promised 40,000 more active-duty army troops. Indeed, Kerry, who 
drum-beats his ‘readiness to order direct military action’ whenever 
necessary, has gone so far as to imply that friendly countries might 
need to be attacked in the war on terror. In February he said, ‘We can’t 
wipe out terrorist cells in places like Sweden, Canada, Spain, the 
Philippines or Italy just by dropping in Green Berets.’

John Kerry has tried to give off a reassuringly multilateralist aura, 
and he says Bush has alienated America’s allies. This may be why some 
people believe him to be less of a warmonger. But they are wrong. First, 
Bush is himself avowedly multilateralist: the Bush White House seldom 
misses an opportunity to emphasise his faith in multilateral 
institutions and international alliances, to boast of how many countries 
there are in the coalition against terror, or to claim that the Iraq war 
was necessary to save the credibility of the United Nations. Second, 
Kerry himself vigorously rejects the idea that US military action can be 
subject to a UN veto. In December, Kerry attacked his then contender, 
Howard Dean, on this very issue, and in February he said, ‘As president, 
I will not wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at 
stake.’ Even Kerry’s commitment to ‘a bold, progressive 
internationalism’ is in fact identical to George Bush’s repeated 
commitments to ‘keep open the path of progress’ in the ‘global 
democratic revolution’, and to provide ‘leadership’ in th

Ralph Nader interview

Salon: Liberal Democrats are fixated this year on one thing: beating
Bush. Do you consider that narrow and shortsighted?
Nader: Yes. I don't think they can beat Bush by themselves. I think they
need a demonstration effect represented in part by this candidacy. We'll
show them ways and modes to beat Bush that they can pick up and run
with. Just like Michael Moore did in endorsing Wesley Clark when he
raised the deserter issue. The two major factors that have been pushing
Bush on the defensive have not come from Democrats. It's been Richard
Clarke and Michael Moore.
Salon: There was an article in the Dallas Morning News a couple of weeks
ago that claimed that a substantial amount of the money coming into your
campaign is from Republican donors to President Bush ...
Nader: [interrupting] No, you have to read that article very carefully.
It's not true at all. As a matter of fact, read the New York Times
yesterday. John Tierney, he goes through that [recounting an analysis by
the Center for Public Integrity shows that only about 3 percent of
Nader's fundraising is coming from donors with ties to the Republican
Party, and that some of those donors have personal ties to Nader].
Salon: In 2000, you were on the ballot in 43 states with the backing of
the Green Party. Running as an independent, will you be able to get on
the ballot in a similar number of states?
Nader: Yes, we will get on the ballot in at least 43 states. We just
missed last time in several states: Oklahoma, Idaho, South Dakota. We're
going to get on the ballot in those states.
Salon: Will this be a volunteer signature-gathering effort?

Nader: As much as possible, yeah.

Salon: You've said you're not interested in the Green Party's nomination
this time around, or that of the Reform Party, which has offered you its
nomination, or the Natural Law Party as well. Why have you decided to
reject those, and does that mean a blanket rejection, given that these
parties could give you ballot access in at least half the states?
Nader: First of all, the Green Party is not going to make up its mind
till June. So that's their problem, not mine. They're split three ways.
A small number don't want a candidate for the presidential election. The
second category of magnitude want restrictions on the candidates -- stay
out of the close states like Oregon and Washington state. And the third
want an all-out run. But you can't wait till June because the ballot
deadlines are closed in some states or closing.
The other point is, this is an independent [campaign]. I'm appealing to
independent voters. It's OK to get supported by other parties, but if
you take their nomination then you're not [independent]. At least in
those states, you're not an independent candidate. One out of every
three people in this country call themselves independent.
Salon: You reject the position of those in the Green Party who say that
you should only run in "safe" states, either Democratic or Republican.
You intend to run even in states that are considered swing states. Why?
Nader: Because if they're trying to build a party, they've got to go all
out in 50 states. It feeds a lot of cynicism to say to people in
Wisconsin, "Well, you're a close state so we're not going to campaign
all out." That is the first step toward being indentured to the
Democratic Party. That's the only reason they would not campaign in
close states.
full: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/04/12/nader/index.html

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

At a Loss

2004-04-12 Thread Funke Jayson J

Title: At a Loss

I have been having what is probably a pointless and circular debate with a friend that has left me hanging for an appropriate response. I don’t know how to answer someone who defends capitalism BECAUSE it is a brutal system, and that they are fine with that system. I don’t know where to go. It leaves me feeling defeated and ignorant. Have others run across this predicament, and if so how have you responded? Perhaps it is my inability to grasp Marx’s insight into Hegel’s dialectics in the 1844 manuscipts?

I have included a snapshot of our conversation below. I don’t claim my argument particularly insightful or anything more than sophmoric so any comments are welcome.

Still learning.

Jayson Funke

FRIEND

PS: Anyone can choose to become self-sufficient. It would be very difficult. One would have to sever all ties to society, but that, then, is your choice. Which speaks to having freedom of choice, even within a capitalist system.

I’m not sure what self-sufficient means. Elaborate.

FRIEND

Sorry, living on the product of one’s own labour

This is argument is a pointless pursuit. This would reduce man to the most base animal necessities. It’s not as if we can, or would desire, to accomplish such a thing.

FRIEND

But that is the only way one can realistically hope to derive full benefit from one’s own labour?

Let’s be realistic. What you suggest below is the worst sort of libertarian utopian myth that an individual needs no one else for his/her survival. We are social creatures and rely on complex social networks both in terms of our basic needs for survival and to complete ourselves as individual human personalities.

Any talk of self-sufficiency must mean control over one’s own labor and the products we produce (in addition to the other forms of self-sufficiency derived from it), and that entails allowing people control over their own life. Private property is a barrier to such a system. What self-suffienciency do I posses when the products of my labor (or any benefit I might derive from them) are not my own, but dependent on another?

FRIEND

There are hermits and isolationists who shun all human contact; I would not call it utopian, either, since it would be the meanest existence (and probably short). However, you seem to be in the same trap, my friend. The myth that man has any right to the products of his labour is just that, a myth. (As is the myth that any one man has control over his own life)

Setting this all aside, we still are hung up on one thing: what right does a man have to the product of his labour? If there are no natural rights, he has none. His entitlement is a social construct, and social constructs are based on power. Therefore, he only has a right to his widget if he has the power to defend it. If we need to rely on complex social networks both in terms of our basic needs for survival and to complete ourselves as individual human personalities, why then is it at all important that I be entitled to the products of my own labour if I’m already dependent?

I don’t claim man has a “right” to his labor. All rights are man-made. My claim is that private property declares that those with power claim the “right” to deny others control over their life by weilding the necessity of survival power inherent in productive land over the landless. Not only do landholders claim it for themselves, but they claim it for generations of their offsrping.

“You wrote “I deny that any separation, i.e. estrangement/alienation, of a person from the land has taken place because separation implies that there was some entitlement, be it common or individual, to the land. “

What could be more directly true than the fact that human beings require the sustinence the land produces in order to live? OR that we a part of nature and play a role in it? Do you deny that a human being has control over its own life, not just in what is decides to do with it, but the very fact that it has been endowed with life? If so, I can’t understand. In fact, your statement leads to Russell’s argument about syntax. Your “denial” of seperation doesn’t undue the material fact that human life is linked to, by necessity, Nature.

If human being A forces human being B to rely on human being A for its complete sustinence, human being A has forced not only a physical seperation, but also an abstract alienation between human being B and his natural self as it relates to/is dependent on Nature. Human being A suddenly has total mastery over human being B to the point of denying human being B that which is his naturally – life. If we don’t agree that life is naturally the quality common to all life (and humans) than we need proceed no further.

FRIEND

And I reply, so what? If those who created private property had the power to do so, then bully for them! I still do not see the importance of every man having control over the product of his labour. Survival is not good enough a reason,

A map of Russia's new (commercial) empires