the great economic disparity

[Chris Burford]

Also from

> The conservative web site
>
> http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

Top of their list of recommended books

The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty, and the Threat to Global
Stability
by William W. Lewis

  List Price:   $28.00

  Price:   $19.60

6 used & new from $14.00


Editorial Reviews

>From Publishers Weekly

Lewis, founding director of the McKinsey Global Institute and former
partner at McKinsey & Company, offers a detailed look at the local
economies in several parts of the world including the U.S., Japan,
India and Brazil. Based on the Institute's 12-year survey and
analysis, Lewis concludes that the great economic disparity between
rich and poor countries will ultimately have a negative impact on all
nations.

<<

But the review does not suggest how conservative reformists would
narrow the great economic disparity between rich and poor countries -
perhaps because it arises from the unequal accumulation of capital on
a world scale? Or should I buy the book???

Chris Burford
London


- Original Message -
From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2004 3:41 AM
Subject: [PEN-L] nasty stuff


> The conservative web site
>
> http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

>
> actually has some interesting stuff.

Singh on a tightrope

[Grant Lee]

The Telegraph - Calcutta: Opinion

Sunday, May 23, 2004

SINGH ON A TIGHTROPE

Can the Congress please its allies and also keep India Inc. happy?

Partha Chatterjee
The author is director and professor of political science, Centre for
Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

It is no longer fashionable to talk about class. But without taking into
account the changing relations between social classes in India in recent
times, I believe it is impossible to understand the larger picture behind
the recent elections.

Until the Eighties, it was widely accepted that the capitalist class in the
cities shared power with the dominant land-owning classes in the
countryside.

Some analysts included the professional and salaried upper-middle class as a
third element within this coalition of ruling classes. They shared power
within the federal structure of the Indian state - capitalists had more
influence over the Central government, the rural landlords over the state
governments. They also shared power by virtue of the ability of the ruling
Congress party to make complex, and often shifting, alliances between
different social groups and classes at local, state and national levels. An
important mechanism here was the position of the supreme leader - Jawaharlal
Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. While individual Congress leaders
were often identified with this or that caste group or local interest or
business lobby, the supreme leader was like Caesar - standing above all
particular interests, representing the party as a whole and, in the days
when the Congress was the ruling party, claiming to represent the nation
itself. Even though it produced an autocratic decision-making structure
within the party and a culture of fawning sycophancy, the Caesarist
leadership was crucial for the Congress to play its role as the political
body managing the contradictory interests of the three dominant classes and
steering their agenda through the treacherous terrain of electoral
democracy.

This structure fell into crisis after 1989. Since then, the Congress has
never secured a majority in parliament. Between 1991 and 1996, it ruled as a
minority government. In 1996, it got a mere 140 seats in the Lok Sabha,
slipping down even further in 1999. As a party capable of ruling on behalf
of the dominant classes, the Congress seemed to have lost all credibility.
In 1999, the Bharatiya Janata Party successfully staked its claim to this
role by devising a series of alliances. Even though it had only 182 seats,
it managed to secure enough allies to command a majority in parliament. But
how was it able to hold together and act on behalf of the dominant class
coalition? How could it put together a combination of policies that would
keep all of them happy?

Apparently, there was a sea change in the balance of social forces in India
in the Nineties. Manmohan Singh, taking over in 1991 as finance minister of
the minority Congress government against the backdrop of an acute foreign
exchange crisis, initiated the process of structural reforms of the economy
by telling parliament: "We have to accept this. There is no alternative."
Government controls were gradually removed; the economy was opened up to
foreign goods, capital and services. Not all sections of Indian capitalists
were initially enthusiastic about foreign competition. But the neo-liberal
economic doctrine was now globally ascendant. Buoyed by the rising tide of
the new consumer economy, the print and visual media assiduously purveyed
the message that rapid growth was the panacea for all social ills: get the
annual growth rate to seven or eight per cent and poverty will vanish,
inequalities will be reduced, everyone will have a chance to get rich and,
who knows, people might even forget to hate their caste or communal rivals.
Running a coalition government in the last five years, the BJP settled
perfectly into the rhythm of this game. Those in charge of the economic
ministries deregulated and privatized with the zeal of revolutionaries.

* * * *

The question has now begun to be whispered: can a rapid growth rate be
sustained in this political climate, or will the capitalist class have to
make compromises with farmers and the government-dependent middle class?
Sonia Gandhi as prime minister would have been an unsettling reminder of
Indira Gandhi's Congress and its soap-opera populism. With Manmohan Singh at
the helm, business circles are hoping that somehow he will keep charging
ahead, regardless of Laloo Prasad Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan or the left. But
the Congress refuses to think of life without Caesar. It has made an
astounding constitutional innovation by electing Sonia Gandhi as chairperson
of its parliamentary party and authorizing her to nominate the leader of the
parliamentary party. It sounds as though the prime minister of the country
will hold office at the pleasure of Sonia Gandhi who is, of course, formally
speaking, just another member of parliament.

So the old structure is 

Re: nasty stuff

[Max B. Sawicky]

Cowen is a libertarian, so he's going to be
good on privacy and some law enforcement issues.
Not libertarian enough, unfortunately, to oppose
the war.

mbs


-Original Message-
From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Michael
Perelman
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2004 10:42 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: nasty stuff


The conservative web site

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

actually has some interesting stuff.  Not as good as our friend, Max's.
Today's
version has a story about the Matrix total information system.  I am sending
the url
because the story has 2 links, indicating that they may be selling some of
their
info. to the public.  This story does not mention the founder's earlier drug
trafficing history, if I recall correctly.
 --
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

nasty stuff

[Michael Perelman]

The conservative web site

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

actually has some interesting stuff.  Not as good as our friend, Max's.  Today's
version has a story about the Matrix total information system.  I am sending the url
because the story has 2 links, indicating that they may be selling some of their
info. to the public.  This story does not mention the founder's earlier drug
trafficing history, if I recall correctly.
 --
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

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

Re: a non-Jones theory of oil prices

[Waistline2]

http://www.thememoryhole.org/corp/gas-prices.htm
 
How Oil Companies Manipulate Gas Prices. 

Re: game theory

[Devine, James]

Ted writes:>... I pointed to Marxâs idea of life in âthe realm
of freedom,â i.e. life as the activity of appropriating and creating
beauty and truth within relations of mutual recognition, as the
ultimate criterion for judging âsuccess.â  Individuals are more or less
successful to the extent that they manage to live such lives.

>Such a life requires the kind of development indicated in the idea of
the âuniversally developed individual.â  This is the ârationalâ
individual; an idea of rationality very different from the idea of
rationality in game theory.  Rationality requires a capacity to
perceive truly.<

This is akin to Aristotle's vision of the (ultimate) ideal life within the ideal 
_polis_. Alas, under capitalism, success is defined differently. (Not by me, but by 
society.)  But that's not "success" in any transhistorical sense of the word. Under 
capitalism, "succcess" involves alienation in Marx's sense of the word. 

>Psychopathology, in the sense Iâm using the term, always means
irrationality of a greater or less degree, an irrationality
characterized by an inability to perceive truly because of the
influence of unconscious phantasy.  It canât, therefore, be functional
to âsuccessâ defined in the above way.< 

But it can be functional to specifically _capitalist_ success, at least if it's 
something like "anti-social personality disorder" (commonly termed "sociopathy" or 
"psychopathy"). 

>On these foundational assumptions, individuals can hold mistaken
irrational beliefs about their self-interest. This will be the case,
for instance, if they are greedy.  Moreover, irrationality about ends
is necessarily associated with some degree of irrationality about
means. This isnât inconsistent with, for example, individuals being
very successfully greedy e.g. making lots of money.  Their
psychopathology wonât have been functional to the achievement of this
success, however.  Had they been less psychopathological, they would
have been more successful and, as part of this, less greedy.< 

these beliefs aren't always "mistaken" or "irrational" within the context of the 
social system (social formation) in which they live and work. For example, within the 
context of capitalism, self-centered greed is quite rational, despite the fact that it 
reflects one's alienated situation in society.

On the other hand, within the context of capitalism, acting on one's ultimate or 
transhistorical rationality (as you use this term) could easily be dysfunctional or 
undermining of _capitalist_ success. It would be hard to get a job, for example. 

>This way of understanding individuals is inconsistent with
understanding them as [having] utility functions.<

No-one believes that people _are_ utility functions. For example, the NC economist 
instead believes that people _have_ them, as statements of their goals (preferences). 
The maximization of utility (of goal-attainment) is "rationality" in the sense of 
instrumental rationality. 

>  Its understanding of
rationality and psychopathology canât be expressed in terms of the
latter.  Its understanding of a psychopath, for instance, can't be
expressed as a utility function without a conscience.<

NC economists -- who see people as utility maximizers -- can't deal with 
psychopathology at all. They don't study psychology, except perhaps behaviorist crap. 
(One NC book I read [by Gandolfi, Gandolfi, and Barash]  based its psychology in 
genetics. It went far beyond the normal NC standards of BS.) The NC conception of 
psychology is tautological or almost so.

>As it understands psychopathology, the utility function conception of
self and others is itself psychopathological.  The conception splits
self and others into externally related fragments (the "goods" that
constitute the content of the function) and subjects them to
obsessional control (the "mathematics").  Splitting, the attack on
linking (that constitutes the fragments as externally related) and
obsessional control are defences against persecutory anxiety.<

I agree.

>The idea of "the realm of freedom" that emerges from this is radically
inconsistent with Marx's.  Mirowski, for instance, locates Arrow's
impossibility theorem within the socialist calculation debate and
interprets it as demonstrating that  "dictatorial or imposed regimes"
would be better able than democratic voting to realize "the realm of
freedom" interpreted in utility function terms as "the welfare optima."<

I think Arrow's point is that _no_ method of social decision-making (including markets 
and dictators) works well.
BTW, I don't see how this discussion is relevant to our discussion. So I'll drop the 
last paragraph.

Jim Devine

 

Stand by your man

[Louis Proyect]

Counterpunch Weekend Edition
May 22 / 23, 2004
Feminists Stand By Their Man
Abortion, Judges and Kerry
By BRANDY BAKER
The thought of anti-abortion zealots winning appointments to the Supreme
Court under a Bush presidency was the one factor that terrified many
into staying the course with the Democratic Party in 2000. Voters, many
with pinched noses and sick stomachs, pulled the lever for Al Gore and
the idea of Roe V. Wade being overturned has motivated many to promise
support for John Kerry this November.
On Wednesday, John Kerry told the Associated Press that he was open to
the idea of appointing anti-abortion judges "as long as it doesn't lead
to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade."1
All hell would be breaking loose right now if Ralph Nader said something
like this. The leaders of the feminist movement were ready to tar,
feather, and run Nader out of DC when he blundered and proposed that if
Roe V. Wade were overturned, abortion would be protected because the
decision would go back to the states. Elizabeth Cavendish, Interim
President of NARAL Pro-Choice America has only this to say about Kerry's
statements: "There's a huge difference between Bush and Kerry on choice
and this is not going to undermine the pages-long documentation that
Kerry is pro-choice."2 Yes, Nader was wrong to say what he said in 2000,
and no, he is not perfect, but what many do not know (and what the
mainstream feminist movement will not tell you) is that Ralph Nader
recently signed to NOW's platform of political, social, and economic
rights for women.3 Kerry has not. And not long before Kerry told all of
us that he was no redistribution democrat, Nader spoke up for cleaning
people4: a segment of the workforce that is overrepresented by women and
people of color. Cleaning people only are noticed if someone is unhappy
with their work.
The problem is that we have a single issue women's movement that is not
equipped to address the collective oppression of women who are on the
lower rungs of the economic ladder because the movement restrains itself
with blind support for the Democratic Party. Ralph Nader knows that
abortion is not the only concern of the majority of this country's
women, which is why he will stick up for those who clean the houses of
the limozine liberals who are campaigning the hardest for Kerry.
Despite the fact that we won Roe V. Wade under the anti-choice Nixon
administration and we did not have abortion providers in over 85% of all
counties under Clinton, many see a Democratic Party presidency vital to
securing abortion rights. Kerry's statements kill the myth we are
guaranteed pro-abortion judges if he becomes president, it also kills
the other argument that ABBers have been promoting: you know, the one
that claims that we can build a movement after we get a Democrat in
office and that Democrat will do all of the right stuff. John Kerry said
that he would be open to appointing anti-abortion judges to the Supreme
Court only 24 days after what many have said was the largest
demonstration in American history. Movements work, but the two party
system does not.
1 CNN.com. "Abortion advocates stand by Kerry"
2 ibid.
3 Nader Supports Economic, Social and Political Rights for Women
4 Ralph Nader Urges: Celebrate National Cleaners Day
Brandy Baker can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: economics education

[Devine, James]

India isn't under the US thumb the way Latin America is. (I was thinking about Latin 
America and generalizing.) There is competition, but at least in Latin America, most 
economics training comes from the US. During the Cold War, the old USSR, etc. did 
indeed train economists, but most of them couldn't get jobs outside Cuba or (for 
awhile) Chile. Some of this can be generalized outside of Latin America.
Jim Devine

-Original Message- 
From: Anthony D'Costa [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Fri 5/21/2004 9:40 PM 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] economics education



But many Indian economists trained in the US still remain staunch
nationalists.  That has to do with the fact most come (came) at the
graduate level.  Besides, the US has competition with the UK (the
Oxbridge types) and much earlier with the fSU, E Germany, and the like.

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 Fri, 21 May 2004, Devine, James wrote:

> I recently saw the film "Y Tu Mama Tambien." This film is about the
> sexual and other adventures of two Mexican youth, one from the upper
> crust and one from the professional middle class. Ignoring the (very
> interesting) sexual dimension, it reminded me of a Chilean graduate
> student I knew at UC-Berkeley. Like him, the two youth spent a lot of
> time smoking dope. Unlike in the U.S. at the time (the mid-1970s), in
> Chile marijuana was the drug of choice for only the upper classes. (Even
> though pot was effectively free for the taking in Chile at the time!)
> This seemed to be true in the movie, too.
>
> The other opiate was economics education. The rich kid in the movie was
> being pressed to major in economics (and to abandon literature) by his
> parents, while my friend was of course studying economics. At the end of
> the movie, the rich kid was chastened and had decided to embrace
> economics. (Sorry to give the ending away!)  It seems that in much or
> most of what used be called the "third world," economics is the field of
> choice of ambitious members of the richer classes. Further, it seems
> that a lot of the prime ministers -- most recently in India -- are
> trained in economics (and thus dubbed "technocrats").
>
> The kind of economics most embraced is the Washington Consensus, the
> neo-liberalism of the IMF, World Bank, and the US Treasury. The third
> world sends its richer kids to study this economics in the economics
> equivalent of the "School of the Americas" (the University of Chicago,
> MIT, etc.) and then the first world sends them back to institute
> structural adjustment, free trade and capital flows, austerity, and
> privatization. It's reminiscent of the way in which the "wogs"
> (colonized populations) used to send their best & brightest to England
> to learn how to help the Brits run the colonies.
>
> Jim Devine
>

Re: Kerry Could Appoint Anti-Abortion Judges

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Lou posted:
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
Will liberal feminist organizations such as Planned Parenthood,
NARAL, and NOW continue to give the Democratic Party a blank check?
Why not? If this didn't stop them, nothing will.
The New York Times
October 23, 2003 Thursday
Bill Barring Abortion Procedure Drew on Backing From Many Friends of
Roe v. Wade
BYLINE: By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, considers herself
decidedly in favor of a woman's right to abortion. "I'm about 99
percent pro-choice," she says.
On Tuesday, she voted the other 1 percent.
Ms. Lincoln was among 17 Democratic senators, many of them strong
advocates of abortion rights, who voted to ban the procedure that
critics call partial-birth abortion. Their votes were not a
surprise: most had voted to forbid the procedure several times
before, as had many abortion rights proponents in the House.
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the defense of
Roe v. Wade has become not the means of defending the right to
abortion but, paradoxically as it may seem, the best way of
curtailing the right and limiting access to abortion.
--
Yoshie
* Critical Montages: 
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Re: The Nader Factor: Democrat Fat Cats toy with anti-war voters

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

"Slept with Nader woke up with Bush in 2000?"
The Nader Factor: Democrat Fat Cats toy with anti-war voters
By Walt Contreras Sheasby

By using the staff and cash of his former rivals, Kerry gets to go
around saying, "I'm not going to ask Nader to drop out--he has as
much right to run--but I'm going to make the case for voting for
me." (4)
It seems, though, that the Kerry camp is still only making the case
for voting against Nader, rather than voting for Kerry.
--
Yoshie
* Critical Montages: 
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

[Fwd: [Marxism] The Nader Factor: Democrat Fat Cats toy with anti-war voters]

[Louis Proyect]

   "Slept with Nader woke up with Bush in 2000?"
The Nader Factor: Democrat Fat Cats toy with anti-war voters
By Walt Contreras Sheasby
 Were it not for a loophole in the McCain-Feingold Act and the
somersaults of defeated candidates Howard Dean, Gen. Wesley Clark,
and Dick Gephardt, petitioners for Ralph Nader would have an easier
time of collecting signatures to put him on the ballot. The anti-Nader
forces in the Democratic Party are being joined by former Nader
supporters in what the maverick candidate calls a “cabal.”
 Funding for the elaborate scheme to strip anti-war and Green voters
from Nader comes from the corporate rich: George Soros, powerful
currency speculator (Soros Fund Management LLC) and billionaire
benefactor (Open Society Institute), his friend Peter Lewis, chairman of
the Progressive Corp., Rob Glaser, founder and CEO of RealNetworks,
Rob McKay, president of the McKay Family Foundation, and benefactors
Lewis and Dorothy Cullman. (1)
 These are the powerful Fat Cats who fund the so-called Section 527
groups that provided support to the candidates in the Democratic Party
primaries, without officially being connected to either the candidate or
the Party. Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code provides a loophole
for fat cats to evade caps on political donations. With the primaries over,
both the 527s and the former candidates are sitting on a ton of unused
cash that can be used for monkey-wrenching both the Green Party voters
and the independent ballot petitioning by Nader followers.
 The latest entry into the psy ops war against Nader is the National
Progress Fund, which plans to run TV ads in six battleground states,
featuring people who voted for Nader in 2000 who now say they regret
their votes. A similar theme is projected on their website called The
NaderFactor.com. The 527 group, formed by major operatives in the
Democratic Party, was announced at the very moment that Nader was
meeting with Kerry, a symbolic gesture equivalent to leaving a horse's
head in Nader's bed. (2)
 A preview of the first TV commercial can be seen at www.The
NaderFactor.com. Bob Schick, a high school English teacher from Ohio,
says: ''Four years ago, I supported Ralph Nader because he stood for the
issues I believed in: a clean environment, civil rights, and a sensible
foreign policy,'' Schick says. ''But now, after seeing how quickly and
thoroughly the Bush administration has wounded our country - there's
more pollution, an economy that sends our jobs overseas, and a war I
have serious questions about - I feel I made a mistake.'' (3)
 The appeal is clearly aimed at those who might regard Nader as the
real anti-war candidate. The website urges other repentant Nader voters
to contact the National Progress Fund to offer their own disavowal of
Nader. "Slept with Nader woke up with Bush in 2000?" is one of the
slogans on the site.
 A senior Kerry aide stressed that the group is -- quote -- 
"completely
independent of the campaign," but Nader has asked Kerry to disavow the
effort to create dissension in the ranks of supporters using 
testimonials of
former Nader voters who have repented.

 The new National Progress Fund brings together the key staff (and
undoubtedly unspent cash) of the Howard Dean, Gen. Wesley Clark,
and Dick Gephardt campaigns. The group is run by Tricia Enright, who
was spokeswoman for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, David Jones,
chief fund-raiser for Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, and John
Hlinko, who led the Draft Wesley Clark Internet movement. By using the
staff and cash of his former rivals, Kerry gets to go around saying, 
"I'm not
going to ask Nader to drop out--he has as much right to run--but I'm going
to make the case for voting for me." (4) In the meantime, the 527 makes
the slightly more negative case with the powerful mea culpa testimonials
of regretful Nader voters.

 Enright said they planned to start airing targeted television ads 
next
week in as many as six states, including Florida. The fund will focus its
advertising firepower on six states that were decided by 2 percentage
points or less in 2000 -- Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa, Oregon,
Wisconsin and New Mexico. Bush carried the first two; Al Gore carried
the latter four.

 As CBS has reported there are three other 527 groups already involved
in the anti-Nader effort. Democrats clearly hope Nader doesn't get on the
ballot, particularly in the battleground states. According to Sarah
Leonard, spokesperson for the Democratic organizations America Votes,
ACT and the Media Fund, they are keeping an eye on Nader's efforts. "If
we think it gets to the point where we need to step in and mobilize to
make sure he doesn't get on the ballot, then we will," she says. (5)
 America Votes (527) is an umbrella group for coordinating other 527s.
Twenty-two of the organizations have each kicked in $50,000 to finance
an umbrella organization. America Votes is run by 

Intellectual whore for the CIA croaks

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, May 22, 2004
Melvin J. Lasky, Cultural Cold Warrior, Dies at 84
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
BERLIN, May 20 — Melvin J. Lasky, the editor of two major intellectual 
journals and a man at the vortex of the debates and controversies thrown 
up by the cold war, died Wednesday at his home in Berlin. He was 84.

The cause was heart failure, Marc Svetov, his secretary, said.
Probably no person was more associated than Mr. Lasky with the term 
cultural cold warrior. In a career that spanned several decades, during 
which he lived in London, Paris and Berlin, he edited the monthly 
magazine Encounter, which was not only one of Europe's leading literary 
and political journals but also a major force in articulating the point 
of view best summed up by the phrase liberal anti-Communism.

The roster of writers published in Encounter included many of the 
leading lights of postwar intellectual life, from Arthur Koestler, 
Bertrand Russell and Isaiah Berlin to Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis 
Borges and V.S. Naipaul.

Mr. Lasky was seen as a hero by his friends and intellectual allies for 
his fierce and uncompromising opposition to totalitarianism. In what was 
a kind of personal credo, he once wrote about the intellectual's 
responsibility to mount an unwavering defense of individual rights, or 
else, as he put it, "manuscripts will be banned, books will be burned, 
and writers and readers will once again be sitting in concentration 
camps for having thought dangerous ideas or uttered forbidden words."

He was himself uncompromising in his disdain for anyone who, in his 
view, had muddled, morally confused thoughts about the irredeemable 
viciousness of Soviet totalitarianism, or who committed, in his eyes, 
the incomprehensible error of seeing the flaws of the democratic West as 
somehow comparable to those of the Communist East.

And yet, as Albert H. Friedlander has written in The Times of London, 
"it would be hard to establish a `party line' which the writers had to 
follow" in their articles for Encounter, which was lively, irreverent 
and consistent in its rigor and literary quality.

In 1966, The New York Times disclosed that the magazine had been 
secretly financed by the C.I.A., which channeled funds through an 
organization called the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which Mr. Lasky 
had helped to create to wage the intellectual battle against Communism. 
The disclosure quickly became one of the major scandals of the cultural 
cold war, seized upon gleefully by Encounter's intellectual opponents as 
proof of a kind of deceitfulness and hypocrisy on the part of Mr. Lasky 
and the magazine's other editors.

After the initial disclosures of the magazine's hidden source of funds, 
Mr. Lasky and the other editors, Stephen Spender and Irving Kristol, 
wrote a letter denying knowledge of the C.I.A.'s role, and there was 
never evidence that the magazine had tailored its views to suit any 
government agency.

Still, some former contributors, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Lionel 
Trilling, stopped writing for Encounter, and Spender resigned as 
co-editor. The magazine continued being published until 1990, but after 
the furor unleashed by the financing disclosures, it was always shadowed 
by the notion that even as it championed the virtues of the open 
society, it was tainted by a kind of clandestinity.

Melvin Jonah Lasky was born in New York on Jan. 15, 1920. He went to the 
City College of New York, a hotbed of left-wing "isms," where among his 
classmates were the men later to be known in New York intellectual life 
as "the two Irvings," Irving Howe and Irving Kristol.

During World War II, Mr. Lasky served as a combat historian in France 
and Germany, and no sooner had the war ended, than he showed what became 
his feisty and prickly approach to political controversy, taking part in 
a literary debate organized as a propaganda exercise in the Soviet 
occupied part of Berlin.

While most participants duly lambasted the "imperialistic" United 
States, Mr. Lasky, who with his goatee looked a bit like Lenin, compared 
the Communist system to Nazism.

That boldness led him to become an adviser to Gen. Lucius D. Clay, the 
American military governor of Berlin, who encouraged him to wage what 
was soon to become known as the cultural cold war. He first founded and 
edited the influential Berlin magazine Der Monat, and later became, with 
Spender, co-editor of Encounter, which had been founded by Mr. Kristol 
in London in 1953.

Mr. Lasky had a knack for being present at some of the major events of 
those years, most notably the anti-Communist workers' uprising in East 
Berlin in 1953 and the Hungarian uprising of 1956. He interviewed 
Eisenhower, Konrad Adenauer and Vaclav Havel, and knew just about 
everyone of note, from Thomas Mann and T.S. Eliot to Bertrand Russell 
and George Orwell. But his main legacy clearly was Encounter, which 
probably published more leading thinkers, scholars and critics than any 
other ma

New Imperialism and beyond

[Louis Proyect]

(This article contains some interesting insights, but lapses into
reformist illusions about "old Europe" and multilateralism in the
conclusion.)
New Imperialism and beyond. Why the New Imperialism will fail and unseat
the Bush Administration?
Petri Minkkinen
After the shock of S-11-2001 terrorist attacks the administration of
George W. Bush launched a full scale global military operation
supposedly to deter and root out international terrorism. Peoples around
the world were shaken by the scale and arrogance of the attacks and by
the equally arrogant nature of the counter-attack of the Bush
administration. Immediately after the terror attacks many began to pose
irritating questions and observations on the nature of attacks[1]. It
seemed obvious that things were not necessarily as self-evident as
supposed by the mainstream media and political pundits. It also became
evident that a terror operation of this magnitude required a level of
skill, resources and planning no ordinary terrorist organization could
have possessed. Therefore some kind of backing by a state level actor
was evidently involved.
Two possibilities emerged out of this presupposition: either the act was
backed and/or ordered by an 'unfriendly' state supporting terrorist
activities, or the US government itself was or some 'friendly' states
were involved in one way or another. The Bush administration acted on
the mixed state-terrorist organization assumption: the attacks were
executed by a dangerous and skillful terrorist organization -al-Qaida
run and financed by Osama bin Laden- and one or several states hostile
to US interests supported the terrorists. There is also another
possibility: Bush administration or its ideologues preaching for the US
global supremacy knew about these attacks and did not act accordingly to
stop them. A more damaging, dangerous and demoralizing version of this
alternative -or subversive, if you wish- line of thought is that the
government, its ideological backers, some 'friendly' state or some other
actors connected to them were more directly involved with these cruel
acts. Be it as it may, this is the central question related to the
attacks and the world political events following them.
The article at hand does not try to resolve this still unanswered
question. Interesting as it is, the arguments presented here are
independent of this crucial question. They rest upon the assumption that
irrespective of the Bush administrations relationship to the attacks
proper, the New Right ideologues of The Project for the New American
Century (PNAC)[2] and its predecessors had planned for a heavy
militarization program and for the maintenance and enhancement of US
world supremacy -militarily, if necessary- well before the sad events of
S-11-2001. Interestingly enough, in a report published a year before the
attacks the PNAC makes itself a suspect. PNAC demanded a massive
rearmament program for the US militarily 'weakened' by the Clinton
administration. However, they expected that "the process of
transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be
a long one, absent some (sic) catastrophic and catalyzing event -like a
new Pearl Harbor"[3]. The purpose of this global exercise is to inhibit
the rise of any competing state or group of states capable of
challenging the US global hegemony. According to the century-old
geopolitical doctrines -adopted and updated by various key players in
the US foreign policy establishment and inside the PNAC- the control of
Eurasia or certain Central Asian countries would be essential for that
purpose. Direct or indirect control, for example, of the oil resources
would give the US ruling classes a possibility to exert control over the
future development of the European Union, Russia and China, not to
mention the Islamic countries of that area inhabited by "some stirred-up
Moslems"[4]. This control allied with a military presence in the region
would also allow the US to defend Israel, use the enduring
Israel-Palestine conflict as a test site for the latest military
technology and control the future development of the Middle-East and
Eastern Mediterranean in general. Intellectual grounds for the direct or
indirect control of the area in question was prepared during the 1990's
by varying actors, such as the pro-imperialist PNAC or pro-hegemony
scholars like Samuel "Clash of Civilizations" Huntington and Zbigniew
"Trilateral Commission" Brzezinski who hold a more cooperative and more
pro-transnational capitalism stance[5].
full: http://www.hapress.com/haol.php?a=n04a07
--
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Lula's China visit

[Marvin Gandall]

Brazilian president Lula’s state visit to China at the head of a huge business 
delegation, beginning today, is part of a strategic effort to connect the biggest 
emerging markets in the eastern and western hemispheres, says an article in the 
Financial Times. 

It is a development “with potentially huge geopolitical implications”, writes the 
Times Latin American editor, Richard Lapper, based on “solid economic fundamentals”. 
China’s insatiable economy needs Brazilian iron ore and other commodities, and Brazil 
is seeking Chinese capital to develop the infrastructure to bring them to market. 

The Asian power’s rapidly developing trade ties throughout Latin America poses a 
significant challenge for the US “right in its own backyard”, says Lapper, especially 
at a time when American relations with Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela have 
“deteriorated”, raising the spectre of “new power blocs in the region”. He suggests 
the US and other OECD countries will need to further invest and open their markets and 
borders to Latin American products and labour to compete with China. 

FT (sub only) article available on http://www.supportingfacts.com

Sorry for any cross posting.


1

Honor and Self-Respect: Concepts Alien to American Liberals and Leftists

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

After Falluja, Najaf, and Abu Ghraib, one conservative pundit after
another has begun to publish chastened reassessments of the invasion
and occupation of Iraq (for a survey of hawks' second thoughts, see
John Tierney, "The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts," New
York Times, May 16, 2004). One of them is David Brooks. On one hand,
Brooks is a good example that even the hawks having second thoughts
about Iraq still cling to one of the core tenets of American
imperialism -- America has a noble purpose of helping others: "We
were so sure we were using our might for noble purposes, we assumed
that sooner or later, everybody else would see that as well. Far from
being blinded by greed, we were blinded by idealism. . . . We didn't
understand the tragic irony that our power is also our weakness. As
long as we seemed so mighty, others, even those we were aiming to
assist, were bound to revolt" ("For Iraqis to Win, the U.S. Must
Lose," New York Times, May 11, 2004). Though Brooks now understands
the idea that "We were going to topple Saddam, establish democracy
and hand the country back to grateful Iraqis. We expected to be
universally admired when it was all over" was "a childish fantasy,"
he will never give up the more enduring childish fantasy that
Americans across classes and races constitute the national "we" who
have shared national interests at home and missions abroad, all
motivated by "idealism." That is to be expected. What is interesting,
however, is that Brooks' column points to crucial concepts that
liberals (and even most leftists) in the United States appear
incapable of understanding -- honor and self-respect:
They [the Iraqis] would do so [revolt against the occupier] for their
own self-respect. In taking out Saddam, we robbed the Iraqis of the
honor of liberating themselves. The fact that they had no means to do
so is beside the point. . . .
The rest of the posting at
.
--
Yoshie
* Critical Montages: 
* Bring Them Home Now! 
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
,
, & 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 
* Al-Awda-Ohio: 
* Solidarity: 

Bill Cosby: not so funny

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, May 22, 2004
Cosby Defends His Remarks About Poor Blacks' Values
By FELICIA R. LEE
Bill Cosby, known mostly as a genial father figure who contributes to a 
wide range of black philanthropic causes, found himself immersed in 
controversy this week. After making inflammatory remarks on Monday about 
the behavior and values of some poor black people, Mr. Cosby said 
yesterday that he had made the comments out of concern and because of 
his belief that fighting racial injustice must also include accepting 
personal responsibility.

Mr. Cosby spoke yesterday after a week of discussion on the Internet, on 
talk shows, on radio programs and in newspaper columns about his 
comments Monday night at a gala at Constitution Hall in Washington 
commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education 
desegregation decision. He has been attacked and applauded for saying 
that "the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal."

He was also reported to have said: "These people are not parenting. They 
are buying things for their kids — $500 sneakers for what? And won't 
spend $200 for `Hooked on Phonics.' . . . They're standing on the corner 
and they can't speak English."

Mr. Cosby said yesterday that what was left out of those comments, first 
reported by The Associated Press and The Washington Post, was that he 
began his remarks by talking about what he said was a 50 percent high 
school dropout rate among poor blacks. The National Center for Education 
Statistics, a federal agency, says that in 2000 the dropout rate for 
blacks was 13.1 percent. Mr. Cosby's publicist, David Brokaw, said it 
was Mr. Cosby's understanding that the rate was 50 percent in some 
inner-city schools.

Mr. Cosby's remarks, which also included the observation that not all 
incarcerated blacks are political prisoners ("people getting shot in the 
back of the head over a piece of pound cake, and then we run out and we 
are outraged") were meant to frame the complexities of black struggle 50 
years after Brown, Mr. Cosby said, when so many legal barriers have fallen.

Some people said Mr. Cosby's comments had simply brought to the surface 
long-simmering generational and class schisms among blacks. Some 
applauded him for using sharp language to reiterate a long-running 
debate among blacks about the direction of the black struggle. Still 
others said they feared that his remarks would become fodder for racists 
or conservatives who believe that blacks alone avoid personal 
responsibility.

"Mr. Cosby was addressing the 50 percent dropout rate that he knows to 
be true," Mr. Cosby said of himself in a telephone interview from San 
Francisco, where he was raising money for a program to get teachers into 
low-income schools. "Was Mr. Cosby taking about all lower-income people? 
No."

"I am in as much pain as many, many people about these people," he 
continued. "The 50 percent dropout rate, the seeming acceptance of 
having children and not making the father responsible and calling him in 
on it. It's easy to pass these things on like some kind of epidemic."

He said later in the conversation: "A 50 percent dropout rate in 2004 is 
not all about what people are doing to us. It's about what we are not 
doing. The Legal Defense Fund and the N.A.A.C.P. can deal on those 
points of law, but something has to come from the people."

Theodore M. Shaw, the director counsel of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense 
and Education Fund Inc., said yesterday that Mr. Cosby's comments had 
upset him. But they spoke afterward, he said, and agreed that black 
inequality needed to be attacked on many fronts, both personal and 
political.

"I was concerned that people in the media would attempt to drive a wedge 
between Dr. Cosby and those pursuing issues of systematic racial 
discrimination," said Mr. Shaw, who spoke to the audience on Monday 
night after Mr. Cosby's comments, asserting that many problems in black 
communities were not the result of personal failures.

But the cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson said that Mr. Cosby's 
comments "betray classist, elitist viewpoints that are rooted in 
generational warfare." Mr. Dyson, a professor of religious studies and 
African studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said Mr. Cosby was 
"ill-informed on the critical and complex issues that shape people's lives."

Mr. Cosby's comments, he added, "only reinforce suspicions about black 
humanity."

Addressing that point, Mr. Cosby said yesterday, "The conservative 
groups are not saying anything that they weren't already saying about us."

Kweisi Mfume, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., said yesterday that he 
agreed with much of what Mr. Cosby had to say. He said he thought most 
of the agitation came simply because Mr. Cosby, who has so much 
credibility among many blacks, said it publicly. Mr. Mfume said he, too, 
had often said that blacks now face many challenges that are beyond the 
scope of the law.

He said he disagreed w

Rightwing foundations intervene in Protestant politics

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, May 22, 2004
Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
As Presbyterians prepare to gather for their General Assembly in
Richmond, Va., next month, a band of determined conservatives is
advancing a plan to split the church along liberal and orthodox lines.
Another divorce proposal shook the United Methodist convention in
Pittsburgh earlier this month, while conservative Episcopalians have
already broken away to form a dissident network of their own.
In each denomination, the flashpoint is homosexuality, but there is
another common denominator as well. In each case, the Institute on
Religion and Democracy, a small organization based in Washington, has
helped incubate traditionalist insurrections against the liberal
politics of the denomination's leaders.
With financing from a handful of conservative donors, including the
Scaife family foundations, the Bradley and Olin Foundations and Howard
and Roberta Ahmanson's Fieldstead & Company, the 23-year-old institute
is now playing a pivotal role in the biggest battle over the future of
American Protestantism since churches split over slavery at the time of
the Civil War.
The institute has brought together previously disconnected conservative
groups within each denomination to share resources and tactics,
including forcing heresy trials of gay clergy members, winning seats on
judicial committees and urging congregations to withhold money from
their denomination's headquarters.
When the Episcopal Church elected an openly gay bishop last summer, the
institute organized and housed a conservative secessionist group called
the American Anglican Council, which still occupies an office down the
hall. When a conservative Methodist minister floated a breakup proposal
at a private breakfast earlier this month, an institute staff member
transcribed the speech and posted it on the institute's Web site, where
it instantly became a rallying cry for disaffected Methodists.
At the Presbyterian Church's assembly last year, the institute helped
block a policy statement that said whether parents were single or gay
made no difference to the moral status of a family, and in the process
it won the appointment of one of its staff members to a committee to
rewrite the policy for this year's meeting.
Although the institute has an annual budget of just less than $1 million
and a staff of fewer than a dozen, liberals and conservatives alike say
it is having an outsized effect on the dynamics of American politics by
counteracting the liberal influence of the mainline Protestant churches.
Together, the Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches have 12.5
million members, and for decades they and other mainline denominations
have provided theological backbone and foot soldiers for liberal causes
like abortion rights, racial and economic equality, the nuclear freeze,
environmentalism and anti-war movements.
For their part, the institute and its allies say they are saving the
denominations from themselves by agitating for a return to Biblical
orthodoxy. They argue that the churches' liberalism has contributed to
their steep decline over the last 30 years even as more conservative
evangelical churches have grown.
"It's pretty clear that the church elite in the mainline denominations
are to the left of the people in the pews," said Diane Knippers, the
institute's president and an Episcopalian who helped found the American
Anglican Council and now sits on its board.
The group has often called on conservatives to change the liberal
denominations from within, especially in the relatively more
conservative Methodist and Presbyterian churches. But Mrs. Knippers said
she could support the notion of divorce for irreconcilable differences,
albeit perhaps with liberals leaving. "Rather than be embroiled in legal
battles in church courts over sexuality, let's find a gracious way to
say, `we will let you leave this system because you believe it violates
your conscience.' "
More liberal Protestants argue that the institute's financial backers
are interfering with the theological disputes mainly for broader,
secular political reasons. "The mainline denominations are a strategic
piece on the chess board that the right wing is trying to dominate,"
said Alfred F. Ross, president and founder of the Institute for
Democracy Studies, a liberal New York-based think tank which produced a
research report in 2000 on the Institute's influence in the Presbyterian
Church.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/national/22CONS.html
--
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: game theory

[Ted Winslow]

Jim Devine wrote:
Ted writes:
I think it's a mistake to see psychopathology as ever "functional."

"Success" can't be furthered by unrealistic thinking.<
unrealistic thinking -- e.g., schizophrenia -- usually doesn't further 
success in capitalist enterprise, on the level of practical reason. 
But it does in other circumstances. Economist Robert Barro has made a 
profession out of embracing unrealistic thinking and has gotten big 
bucks. Some religious leaders are extremely unrealistic (at least on 
the theological, theoretical level) but have convinced large numbers 
of disciples to follow them and to give them money. There are lots of 
other examples that suggest that unrealism can be quite lucrative as 
long as it doesn't spill over into the nuts and bolts of practical 
living (managing the books, etc.) or if there's some trusted 
individual who will take care of those. (Even so, sometimes 
unrealistic thinking as the stock market soars can pay off by luck (if 
one sells at the peak).)

On the other hand, when I referred to "psychopathology" (or 
sociopathology or "antisocial personality disorder") I wasn't talking 
about psychopathology _in general_ but specifically about the lack of 
a conscience. That kind of psychopathology seems to be rewarded and 
thus encouraged by the structure of capitalist society. (As Ken noted, 
the corporation itself institutionalizes antisocial personality 
disorder.) The main problem for a psychopath of this sort is to keep 
others from knowing that he or she is one of those; this is called 
"public relations."
In what you’ve cut out, I pointed to Marx’s idea of life in “the realm 
of freedom,” i.e. life as the activity of appropriating and creating 
beauty and truth within relations of mutual recognition, as the 
ultimate criterion for judging “success.”  Individuals are more or less 
successful to the extent that they manage to live such lives.

Such a life requires the kind of development indicated in the idea of 
the “universally developed individual.”  This is the “rational” 
individual; an idea of rationality very different from the idea of 
rationality in game theory.  Rationality requires a capacity to 
perceive truly.

Psychopathology, in the sense I’m using the term, always means 
irrationality of a greater or less degree, an irrationality 
characterized by an inability to perceive truly because of the 
influence of unconscious phantasy.  It can’t, therefore, be functional 
to “success” defined in the above way.

On these foundational assumptions, individuals can hold mistaken 
irrational beliefs about their self-interest.  This will be the case, 
for instance, if they are greedy.  Moreover, irrationality about ends 
is necessarily associated with some degree of irrationality about 
means. This isn’t inconsistent with, for example, individuals being 
very successfully greedy e.g. making lots of money.  Their 
psychopathology won’t have been functional to the achievement of this 
success, however.  Had they been less psychopathological, they would 
have been more successful and, as part of this, less greedy.

This way of understanding individuals is inconsistent with 
understanding them as utility functions.  Its understanding of 
rationality and psychopathology can’t be expressed in terms of the 
latter.  Its understanding of a psychopath, for instance, can't be 
expressed as a utility function without a conscience.

As it understands psychopathology, the utility function conception of 
self and others is itself psychopathological.  The conception splits 
self and others into externally related fragments (the "goods" that 
constitute the content of the function) and subjects them to 
obsessional control (the "mathematics").  Splitting, the attack on 
linking (that constitutes the fragments as externally related) and 
obsessional control are defences against persecutory anxiety.

The idea of "the realm of freedom" that emerges from this is radically 
inconsistent with Marx's.  Mirowski, for instance, locates Arrow's 
impossibility theorem within the socialist calculation debate and 
interprets it as demonstrating that  "dictatorial or imposed regimes" 
would be better able than democratic voting to realize "the realm of 
freedom" interpreted in utility function terms as "the welfare optima."

"For anyone steeped in the socialist calculation controversies of the 
1930s, it is hard to see it [Arrow’s theorem] as anything other than a 
reprise of the Cowles theme that the Walrasian market is a computer 
sans commitment to any computational architecture or algorithmic 
specification; the novel departure came with the assertion that 
democratic voting is an inferior type of computer for calculating the 
welfare optima already putatively identified by the Walrasian 
computer."  (Machine Dreams, pp. 303–04)

Ted