[PEN-L:117] Re: Why Do Markets Crash?
The article I saw on the SACP conference, from the Electronic Mail Guardian, didn't quote these particular remarks (although what I saw certainly has the same tone). Where did you read about the conference? Do you need the Mail's piece to be forwarded? Andy Pollack On Mon, 06 Jul 1998 09:41:09 +0100 Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Days after a petulant Thabo Mbeki (Mandela's anointed successor as President of S Africa) complained to his ex-SACP comrades of the unreasonableness of making socialist demands at a time 'when our financial markets, like others in other parts of the world, are afflicted by great turbulence [and] the whole world is gravely concerned about the Japanese and other East Asian economies and their impact on the world economy,' *Insurrection* publishes Michael Perelman's seminal extended essay on just why markets love to go pear-shaped. Michael Perelman writes: "...With the collapse of the Soviet Union, capitalism now proudly proclaims its ultimate triumph. Formerly socialist states frantically scramble to remake themselves as market economies. In the United States, everything left of the political center has all but disappeared from the national political dialogue. Markets are now supplanting virtually every kind of service that the state previously supplied. Public schools, public prisons, public streets and even police work are being privatized. Even so, I am confident that capitalism's victory will be temporary. The market system is so familiar and our institutional memories so short, we tend to forget even if we knew in the first place that capitalism is, by its very nature, an inherently unstable system. Capital has enjoyed moments of triumph before, but they have always been followed by a subsequent disaster" The URL is: http://www.geocities.com/~comparty/content1.htm _ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
Re: May day
A couple progressive publications have mentioned during antiNike reports that New Balance meets both criteria. I can't vouch for it, but that's what they say. Happy May Day, Happy Birthday Andy Pollack On Fri, 1 May 1998 16:08:30 EDT Jay Hecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well, I gues I should tell everybody: Today is my 40th birthday. Somehow astrology and politics must have had some role way back when... (alright, so I also played left wing in ice hockey). Can anyone tell me if there are any children's sneakers that are: 1) made in the US, and 2) not under sweat-shop conditions (anywhere!) ? Thanks, Jason _ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
Re: 2 night thoughts on current events
On my website on Computers and Socialism I've periodically (but not recently) put tidbits of futuristic fictional scenarios depicting the use of particular technologies for planning after the rev. Your post touches on the topic for a scenario I've been mulling over, to wit: During a nationwide general strike, in tandem with the seizure of the factories and offices, the computer databases and networks tracking production and distribution of the seizing units are administered by the strike committees to restart the economy under workers' control. To facilitate the effort, Internet I as a whole is seized (business, govt. and academia have long since moved most of their computing to Internet II... The result: dual power on the ground and in cyberspace. Andy Pollack On Sat, 7 Feb 1998 03:37:05 -0600 (CST) valis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I fully expect that within 2 or 3 years the EU and Russia will proclaim and pursue a Declaration of Cyber-Independence, even if it means a rewiring of the whole continent and junking millions of computers. Europe is serious about remaining recognizable to itself. valis _ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
Re: 2 night thoughts on current events
Yikes! :(- Sorry, it's www.geocities.com/researchtriangle/lab/4603 On Sat, 07 Feb 1998 09:04:29 -0500 Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Why don't you remind us of what the URL is? For somebody so turned on to computers and socialism, it is incredible that you left this out. (Insert smiley face here.) Louis Proyect _ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
Re: Santa Fe
Without challenging what Bill Lear said, there appear to be some useful insights to be gained from the SFI crew, whatever their motivations and political conclusions. I've just started to familiarize myself with the SFI, but my impression is they are serious mainstream scientists, doing some of the best work in their own fields, and trying to integrate the results, all around the theme of complexity. While popular coverage of them (as of chaos partisans) sometimes gives the impression they're New Agey, in fact I believe their focus on the various components of complexity present some useful methodological insights that are potentially of use for Marxists. For instance: although not a member of the SFI or their milieu, Niles Eldredge (Stephen Jay Gould's theoretical partner), has written several books on interacting hierachies (ecological and economic) with multiple parallel and emergent levels in biological evolution, in a way that seems to mirror the best insights of the SFI's work on complexity (although I'm sure he did so without their aid). His approach seems applicable to social systems which have similarly complex structures (i.e. it could be a way to analyze the interaction of class, gender and race without negating the centrality of class or of lapsing into truisms, but instead specifying precisely where, how and why each structure affects the other). See Waldrop's book on the SFI and Murray Gell-Mann's the Quark and the Jaguar. More importantly, go straight to Eldredge. On Sat, 31 Jan 1998 14:20:44 -0500 Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So this Krugman brouhaha got me spidering, and I came across this at the Santa Fe Institute web site (http://www.santafe.edu/): SANTA FE INSTITUTE Economics Since its founding more than a decade ago the SFI economics program has been building an adaptive, complex, evolutionary viewpoint into the central body of economic theory. Much of the work envisions the economy as composed of large numbers of interacting agents, mutually adjusting to each other as time passes. The agents in this economy-the "interacting particles" of economics- decide their actions consciously, with a view to the possible future actions and reactions of other agents. That is, they formulate strategy and expectations, they learn and adapt. As this learning and mutual adaptation take place, new economic structures or patterns may emerge, and there is a continual formation and reformation of the institutions, behaviors, and technologies that comprise the economy. Some parts of the economy may be "attracted" to an equilibrium; some parts may continually evolve and never settle. The objective of SFI's program is to provide methods, theories, frameworks, and solutions that will help catalyze or facilitate this process-viewpoint in economics. The Economics Program is offering a Graduate Workshop in Economics: Computational Modeling and Complexity here at SFI from June 14-27, 1998. Who exactly are these folks? What, aside from Arthur, is their pedigree? From the board of trustees, it looks like echt cyberlibertarian. Has anyone, aside from the excitable Mark Stahlman, written on this crowd? Doug _ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]
Re: French unemployed movement
On Sat, 24 Jan 1998 19:59:33 + john gulick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Another question: how do proponents of the 35-hour week in Italy, France, and the Netherlands realistically think it will be possible to pay workers who work only 35 hours for 40 hours' work ? Unless there is a massive increasein productivity (so that the rate of surplus value extraction remains more or less the same) won't there be a capital strike, or diversion of capital into the financial sector, or somesuch thing ? Waiting w/bated breath for answers, John Gulick Ph. D. Candidate Sociology Graduate Program University of California-Santa Cruz (415) 643-8568 [EMAIL PROTECTED] The productivity increase that's been happening for the last few decades is what makes possible a shorter workweek movement -- that and the political will to forge such a movement. European workers will fight for the 35-hour week to the extent that they resent having restored profitability through heightened productivity without sharing the gains. U.S. workers have done a similar favor for their bosses by not fighting lean production, longer hours, contingent work, etc. There is no comparable movement here, however, for a couple reasons: 1) the lack of a political tendency taking the initiative to forge such a movement (and the Labor Party's 28th Constitutional Amendment campaign is a sad diversion); 2) the lower unemployment rates in the U.S. That is, the problem is -- outside of communities of color -- not so much no jobs as really bad jobs. A jobs movement here would thus have a shorter work week as a component, but would have to articulate demands around job security (rights to permanent, fulltime status), benefits, bans on overtime, and above all higher pay. (It would as well have special demands around higher unemployment levels in communities of color, and special targets for jobs creation in areas of lacking social services: child care, health, education, housing, etc.) Can we take such an initiative? Can the various rank and file groups, labor/community coalitions, Labor Party, etc., meet in conference and work out a set of demands and a plan to take it into our workplaces, union meetings and community organizations? Should such a movement in Europe (or the U.S.) be successful, there would of course be a capital strike. That's why labor will take up and continue the fight for this demand only on two conditions: a) it recognize that it is fighting for productivity gains already squeezed out of it; b) to the extent its demands go beyond recouping that surplus, and jeopardize future profitability of capital, whether national, regional or international, it is willing to disregard that concern and in fact to consider again alternatives to capital's rule. Andy Pollack
Re: request
Dear Michael, Glad to hear the book is coming out! If in the category of resources you include rank-and-file newsletters (and Websites), could you mention the Health Care Worker Monitor (www.igc.org/hcwm)? I can give you copies and details if it's relevant (and also have addresses for NY transit and teamster dissidents).. I also have some ideas for labor history references but suspect you've got that covered. Andy Pollack We want to include an Appendix of useful resources for readers. I would greatly appreciate suggestions for things like books (rreferences, how-to books, etc.),magazines, web sites, directories, publishers, etc. Naturally I will credit anyone who sends me sources which I use in the Appendix. Thanks in advance. Michael Yates
