[PEN-L:11957] Re: UPS/IBT provocateur
Hey Louis, Thanks for your remarks. Insightful per usual. I tried to qualify my comments by saying in no way did I mean to belittle the significance of the IBT victory for the defense of the material interests of the U.S. working class. I was just thinking out loud, hoping that the main political lesson that is drawn from this success is not, "U.S. working class gets to claim its distributive share of the great post-1991 economic expansion." Indeed the display of solidarity in the ranks that you mention was quite inspiring. Still, at some point, I would like to see unions become cells in a broader ecological socialist campaign fought on many levels by many entities. To the extent it's going on now it's mainly about, as you mention, preserving and enhancing workplace safety rules, certain leaders (like OACW's Bob Wages) trying to mobilize members to support transitions to non-toxic (but still capitalist) production, etc. But, yeah, you gotta start somewhere. Incidentally, in the latest Counterpunch an article reveals that the AFL-CIO's got three times as much $$$ dedicated to a _single_ real estate project as it has in its new, improved, expanded organizing budget. So top-tier AFL-CIO hacks (in cahoots with the more conservative elements of the S.F. building trades ?) are directly contributing to out-of-control gentrification of S.F. and denying the popular classes the "right to the city". John Gulick P.S. That article you downloaded by NYT's Uchitelle a few weeks back was practically Marxist, although obviously it didn't indulge Marxist jargon. The ballyhooed expansion will come to a close if labor is motivated to get too uppity after UPS success. First time I've seen in a long time the idea of "cost-push crisis" directly attributed to a winning labor struggle, as opposed to a generic tight labor market. On Mon, 25 Aug 1997, Louis N Proyect wrote: On Sun, 24 Aug 1997 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Would the left be content with a world in which the package carrying working class could afford to purchase and consume the mail order catalogue goods they deliver, in the private splendor of their tract homes with a sport utility vehicle in every garage ? Somebody on Pen-L commented that the victory proved that globalization is a ruse and that popular pressures can still force capital to pass on productivity gains in the form of higher wages, more stable employment, better fringes, and so on. Maybe so (depending on sectors, firms, etc.) but this argument assumes that the rejection of Keynesianism, social market economy, etc., is strictly pragmatic, not political. I prefer Michael Perelman's observation a few months ago that multiplying social democratic capitalist patterns of work/community standard of living production and consumption linkages is neither materially possible or existentially desirable over the long-run. The victory of the UPS strikers is no different from any economic strike. It does not challenge the underlying assumptions of the capitalist system. The reason a victory was important, however, is that it serves as an inspiration for all of labor and its allies. A victory for UPS would have strenghtened the hand of corporate American which has not only an anti-union agenda but an anti-environmental agenda as well. Looking back historically at the capitalist offensive which was launched during the Carter administration, it is clear that not only was an attack on wages and working conditions necessary, but an attack on occupational safety and the environment as well. The same corporations that sought to apply downward pressure on wages sought to relax restrictions against water and air pollution. The perfect symbol for this two-fold attack is NAFTA, which is anti-labor and anti-environment. The question of how society is organized is important but it can not be separated from the general relationship of forces in the class struggle. Victories for the capitalist class tend to force the left to accept a weakened voice. This is what explains the popularity of market socialism in some sectors in recent years. Victories for the working class, on the other hand, tend to give us confidence that an alternative to the capitalist system is possible. When the CIO was at its most powerful during the 1930s, the grass-roots movement that accompanied it foreshadowed a world in which the working class could govern society. The NY Times article I just posted which deals with the organizing strategy of the Teamsters union mentions that they updated their Web Page every day. I have a vision of a labor movement that is in command of such technology. It was such a labor movement that Karl Marx had in mind when he considered the possibility of a dictatorship of the proletariat, words that in their context mean nothing but the working class ruling society. Who knows what will happen next with the labor movement. The only hope I
[PEN-L:11634] another obituary -- Fela Kuti
Pen-L'ers, Amidst all the interpretive differences over the meaning of Burroughs' life, writings, and death, no one has mentioned the passing of another important -- in my mind, much more politically important -- "cultural worker" -- the self-styled Nigerian musician/dissident, Fela Kuti. Fela Kuti, despite the bizarre contradicitions of his personal life (e.g. he married all 30-or-so of his female backup singers in a ceremony in the late 70's), was a consistently harsh critic of the brutal policies imposed by the string of neo-colonial (and usually military) kleptocracies that have long ruled Nigeria. His rhythmic and orchestral compositions, which were unyielding in their populist satire of Nigeria's comprador class, were a great achievement of mixing art and politics. I don't know that much about Nigeria, or even the experience and work of Fela Kuti, but what little I do know, makes me mourn his passing. John Gulick UC-Santa Cruz
[PEN-L:10998] Re: K/Y ratios
I don't religiously subscribe to Marxist value theory, and hence don't recall much of what I used to know, but I thought that it was possible for a particular fraction of capital to have at once a) a high OCC, and b) high rates of profit, b/c of the way that the total mass of surplus value is split up amongst money K, landed K, new industrial K, mature industrial K, labor-intensive K, capital-intensive K (mediated through and by the state as well as national and international markets). It's possible that amongst all the capitalist firms in the world the U.S. features a higher than average percentage of firms which have a high OCC (hence the low capital/output ratio) but also the revived profit rates of late, given the way that the distributional system gives technological rents to innovative industries and other forms of rent (I forget what they're called) to capital-intensive ones ... John Gulick UC-Santa Cruz I think the following speaks to these questions. Paul Mattick, 1983: "For the rate of profit not to decline, output must grow faster than the constant capital, which is only another way of saying that the rate of exploitation must exceed the rate of accumulation. As far as can be established on the basis of the unreliable statistics we have, this was the case during the last century, although accumulation was interrupted by a series of depressions. On the basis of then existing capital structure, the rate of exploitation apparently sufficed to ensure the expanssion process. This may explain the rather rapid accujmulation of capital during this period. Since the first decade of the present century, however, the capital-output ratio has stabilized, which is to say the rate of accumulation has slowed down, relative to existing capital. But as the accumulation of capital is also a concentration process and thus plays larger profits into fewer hands, the accumulating capitals were not for some time aware of the decline in profits. And because the centralization process can raise the rate of profit even in the absence of capital concentration, simply by the reorganization and different utilization of existing capital, a relative stagnation of capital does not at once express itself in lower profits. On the other hand, the hastened concentration and centralization of capital can also be seen as measures forced upon capital to maintain its profitability. Insofar as these measures compensate for lack of sufficient new investments, they hold down the rising organic composition of capital, thus bolstering the rate of profit at the expense of accumulation. But while the profit rate may be maintained, general economic activity stagnates, for it cannot advance without the production of additional capital. Sooner or later, the stagnation leads to a crisis, which can be overcome through the resumption of the accumulation process. "As long as the share of surplus value within the value of the total output allows for both capitalistc consumption and new investments adequate to the already existing capital, the rate of prift will not fall, even with a rising organic composition of capital, or in bourgeois terms, with the increase of the ratio of capital to net output. But this is just the point: while the rate of profit *must* fall with the rising organic compostion of capital a more rapid increase of the rate of exploitation, visible in larger output, prevents this tendency from showing itself in the actual profit rates. To progress, capitalism must constantly raise the productivity of labor, that is, reinvest in more efficient means of production throught the accumulation of capital. A slowing-down of the rate of accumulation, or even capital stagnation, while on the one hand reducing or preventing the rise of the organic composition of capital and thereby stabilizing the rate of profit, on the other hand will lead to a sudden fall of profits through the reduction of total production, on account of the lack of new investments. A part of the surplus value remains in its monetary form, in which it does not yield surplus value, and to that extent reduces the total mass of profit over time. "As capitalist production is the production of capital via the production of commodities, a lack of new investments can only have one cause, namenlythe fear that such investment may prove to be unprofitable and therefore senseless. This fear is not a psychological phenomenon but derives directly from the fact that the rate of profit on the functioning capital already shows a strong tendency to decline. The reason for this decline is not discernible, for it has to do with capital as a whole, with the total social mass of surplus value in relation to the total social cpaital. But while not discernible, it nontheless affects all individual capitals, although to varying degrees, and determines their individual decisions with regard to investment policies. Thte
[PEN-L:10905] Re: Jospin's compromise
Pen-l'ers, Surely it can't come as any surprise that Jospin caved in to Blair and Kohl so easily, given the fact that the Socialists have long stood behind Maastricht, even if they disagreed with the fiscal austerity versions of same. Now that the official social democrats of Europe in their various stripes more or less agree on an EC in which the "socially excluded" are dealt with by being offered EC-backed loans if they are deemed credit-worthy (Clinton's domestic micro-credit model applied to EC), thus resurrecting the old liberal utopia of a nation of shopkeepers, what can/should the left reply in return ? Please, it should not revolve around holding Jospin to his promise to create 700,000 new jobs. The recent pen-l discussion on overwork and consumerism should drive home how bankrupt neo-Keynesian measures such as this are, be they achieved via subsidies to capital, or via state-driven taxing and spending. (I should say parenthetically that I am impressed with the maturity and subtlety of red-green thought on this list lately, so rarely have I encountered eco-socialist ideas on this list in the past). Liberals in this country have focused on "jobs, jobs, jobs" and under Clinton's watch "the economy" (reified) has generated lots of jobs, and where has that got us ? I have not heard or seen Jospin utter one word about the social and ecological use-values of these 700,000 new jobs. Do the Communists and the Greens in France have any agenda as to the use-value contents of a full employment strategy (I assume they do) ? The Socialists' recent (and now discarded ?) advocacy of an EC-funded trans-European high speed rail system was all about reducing the turnover time of capital and bolstering EC competitiveness (and soaking up surplus labor-power simultaneously), nothing about the qualitative (i.e. quality of life and ecological) virtues of mass transit. Jospin's campaign promise of the 35-hour workweek and work-sharing seems a bit more palatable. But I would imagine it was only a rhetorical gesture with no strategy about how to achieve it (since Mitterand promised the same 15 years ago, before money and investment capital markets were as fluid as they are today, and got thoroughly punished), and, anyway, alongside this proposal there was no mention of what social and ecological use-values reallocated labor would be accomplishing. Like the anarcho-punk demonstrator's billboard in Amsterdam read, "get a life, not a job". Social democracy is dead. It was normatively bankrupt, and now it is pragmatically bankrupt, b/c the international market will no longer tolerate it, its standard-bearers will no longer defend it. Cutting-edge social movements, recognizing that it was normatively bankrupt and is now politically impracticable, have moved on to pressure for better things. John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz
[PEN-L:10802] movies, etiquette, pitfalls of social democracy, etc.
Silkwood -- labor process in the nuclear power industry, corporate surveillance and intimidation, and betrayl by cynical and slick liberal D.C. advocacy lawyers (a Hollywood flick w/o grotesquely Hollywood production values or plot twists) ... John Gulick P.S. Karl, if you're going to get on my case about endorsing the consumption of an exchange value and hence reproducing capital lemme just say that I admire your anarcho-syndicalism but I don't confuse my own predilection for philosophico-practical purity w/real politics, and in fact, avoid real politics by in large b/c of this predilection ... nonetheless, and here I go again, radicals should have a long-term eye not on better compensating and reallocating alienated labor, but on abolishing alienated labor, and, indeed, much of "productive" labor altogether, since a great deal of it is socially unnecessary and ecologically irrational ... but there is one hell of a here to there question which I won't even pretend to answer ...
[PEN-L:10755] books on contemporary imperialism
Dear all, I am a sociology graduate student at the University of California-Santa Cruz and I am teaching a course this summer on the history of world capitalism. I was wondering if any of you out there could recommend an elusive book hot off the presses on the following topic: contemporary imperialist rivalry between the U.S., Japan, and the EC, with references to such phenomena as the Gulf War, Helms-Burton, U.S. sanctions against "rogue states," trade and investment policy w/China, the formation of supra-national currency blocs, the expansion of NATO, disputes in the WTO, and so on. I've been looking for such a comprehensive and theoretically savvy source but haven't found it yet. Whatever help you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Just e-mail me directly. Thanks much in advance, John Gulick Sociology Graduate Program UC-Santa Cruz [EMAIL PROTECTED]
